Our Activities

Local and regional governments can have a tremendous impact on city-region food systems, yet many decision makers are unaware of the leverage subnational governents have over their food systems. ICLEI highlights the role local and regional governments can play in improving sustainable and resilient food systems to raise awareness among key stakeholders and partners. ICLEI develops knowledge materials to advance understanding of, and to advocate for, sustainable food systems while promoting local government’s actions on this field.

ICLEI Oceania has posted a ‘science communications toolkit’ on the website, a collation of useful resources for sustainability students. Through the Young Writers Network students and graduates are empowered to become engaging communicators. Sharing evidence-based knowledge in credible and persuasive ways is paramount to the health of a mindful and engaged society, and is a prerequisite for sustainable development policies at all levels of government, especially local and regional governments, who interface most closely with communities. Through capacity building, and offering online resources and social networking events in partnership with other sustainability organisations in Melbourne, Australia, ICLEI is assisting academic researchers in translating their sustainability research into practice. ICLEI is assisting researchers and students in translating their sustainability research into practice.

Information available to urban planners – such as applicable legal frameworks and relevant policies – are useful to citizens, providing them with a better insight into the planning process and local government decision making. ICLEI is exploring how to use social media and other ICT solutions for better public participation and urban co-creation, and develop new applications together with 3 major European cities. ICLEI will give citizens access to data about their city in an easy to understand way, enabling them to better support the decision-making process.

Innovative research has been undertaken by ICLEI in Blantyre, Gaborone and Harare to enhance understanding of the influence of people’s perceptions and values during their interpretation of climate risk narratives.

Drawing on various research projects, ICLEI aims to make research work for local sustainability at the European level. ICLEI works to bridge the gap between research, policy-making and action in sustainable development, at and for the local level. ICLEI organizes knowledge brokerage between local governments and other stakeholder groups such as researchers, civil society initiatives, start-ups etc.

The PROMISE Tool has helped strengthen capacity of local government for integrated, participatory, inclusive and sustainable development and efficient resource mobilisation and utilisation to enhance service delivery, increase community participation and promote diversity in the urban system. Local authorities have been supported to create, enable and institutionalize equitable and inclusive governance mechanism and facilitate the development of smart and sustainable growth in cities through the project. Cities identified the projects that are most desirable and needed by the community. Local governments have recognized the need and importance of citizen engagement.

The Urban Transition Alliance connects industrial legacy cities from Europe, USA and China committed to accelerate ambitious and inclusive transitions, as well as showcasing their sustainability leadership. Alliance cities share their own transition experiences, knowledge and good practices based on social, economic and environmental challenges within their unique industrial legacy context. Through a tailored exchange platform hosted by ICLEI, the Alliance helps cities to identify and leverage expertise to co-create implementation strategies for sustainability-related projects.

During the current project phase, the ICLEI further encourages the Alliance member cities to include an equity-based approach in their transition projects, not only to achieve climate and environmental targets, but also to provide opportunities to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Alliance cities receive support on key equity-focused sustainability issues through two challenge cycles in 2020 and 2021 with 4-5 challenge topics selected per round. The outcomes of these challenge support cycles will shape a blueprint of lessons and good practices for cities worldwide on how social equity and climate action can reinforce each other.

In a rapidly urbanizing world, cities need to become smarter to respond to citizen needs and to reduce their environmental footprint. ICLEI is shaping the Smart City debate in Europe through the Lighthouse demonstration projects (such as GrowSmarter and RUGGEDISED), lead replication and exploitation efforts in more than 50 cities and constructively reflect upon the impact of smart solutions on achieving social cohesion and urban environmental goals.

ICLEI aims to increase the capacity of change makers, civil society and organizations to contribute to more just, sustainable and resilient futures. ICLEI offer academic and professional education on the theory and practice of transformative societal change, by facilitating peer-to-peer learning processes between 15 frontrunner cities and twice as many other cities within Europe.

ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR co-hosted two workshops for two Chinese cities – Ningbo and Chengdu – to raise awareness of urban resilience with specific focuses on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction among local officials.
The workshops were structured in sessions of concept and tools introduction, and presentations of international and domestic cases on resilience and adaptation. Assessments of local resilience were also conducted via group exercises followed by suggestions on improvements.
ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR will continue to work to support 2 more local governments in China in implementing the Sendai Framework and other urban resilience objectives via workshops. It is expected that local disaster risk reduction planning will be better risk-informed when cities are equipped with skills to assess their respective risks, identify gaps, and ultimately lead to projects to address those gaps. A learning publication will be produced as the final output of the series, to share lessons learned on improving urban resilience in the context of global warming with other cities.