In this action research project, ICLEI is providing support to four cities in developing collaboration mechanisms that advance climate resilient developmment, which can then be adapted to other contexts. The implementation of each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) via enhanced multi-level governance has been identified as an area of focus of this project. Through this project, ICLEI builds on the understanding of what enables collaboration mechanisms for climate resilient development, such as environments that allow for learning-by-doing and accumulation of knowledge that can be harnessed, local government officials who are engaged and passionate about building climate resilience, and cities where strong multi-sectoral partnerships exist. Building climate resilience is a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary issue, and therefore ICLEI promotes collaborative governance, which favours transdisciplinary collaborations that increase the depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise that can be drawn on when tackling complex issues such as climate resilience.

ICLEI supports the island cities by providing streamlined processes for assessing their risks and challenges and developing achievable action plans. It works side-by-side with the cities and assists them to find partners for action. ICLEI has been working with Honiara since 2016 to assist the City to undertake a disaster risk self assessment and action, using the Sendai Framework and scorecards, building capacity and supporting city leaders and staff to attend international events for peer-to-peer exchange and learning. There is now a strong understanding of disaster risk reduction among City staff and elected councilors, and an understanding of how disasters and climate change impact all the city development challenges. The ongoing project has led to strong partnerships between ICLEI, UNISDR, UN Habitat and academic professionals and institutions.

American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) program matches communities with earth and space scientists to lay strong, scientifically based foundations for climate action and adaptation planning. ICLEI partnered with TEX for a facilitated workshop with scientists and 12 communities, including ICLEI members Reno and Missoula. In 2017, ICLEI worked with members Antioch, East Lansing, and Savannah as part of the Resilience Dialogues, a public-private collaboration to connect communities with the most appropriate resources. ICLEI acted as a community network lead to help scientists, experts and city staff deliver a set of resiliency questions and connect threats to resource.

ICLEI supports Fiji cities by providing streamlined processes for assessing their risks and challenges and developing achievable action plans. It works side-by-side with the cities and assists them to find partners for action. ICLEI has recently assisted 7 city and town councils to undertake disaster risk self assessment and action planning, using the Sendai Framework and scorecards, and built capacity for disaster risk reduction at 2-day workshops with these cities. City staff and elected councilors now hav an understanding of how disasters and climate change impact all the city development challenges. The outcomes of the DRR workshops have been collated into a “Generic Fiji Local Government DRR Action Plan” and provided to the Ministry Local Government and the National Disaster Management Office as input for their current reviews of the Local Government Act and National Disaster Management Plan.

While many island urban settlements are growing rapidly, climate change and increasingly frequent disasters are stressing urban systems. ICLEI promotes sustainable island and urban development through resilience and systems planning, clean energy, coastal fisheries management, infrastructure, innovative finance, ecosystems services, post disaster recovery and sustainable tourism. ICLEI collaborates with Mayors and leaders, through twinning of island cities with other cities and regions, to create fruitful partnerships to deliver scalable solutions to build resilience on islands and globally.

This workshop focused on exploring solutions, technology and applications on building a more resilient and water smart city by a series of indoor lectures, technical visits and group presentations. The target participants include government officials, executives, and research and development personnel responsible for the water management and technical implementation. Experts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, New Zealand, Australia and Netherlands shared their expertise with representatives from fifteen countries.

ICLEI, through the AfriAlliance project, aims to support existing networks in identifying and sharing social innovations and technological solutions for key water and climate challenges. Capitalising on existing and emerging knowledge and innovation in Africa and the EU, ICLEI supports this process by contributing to the development of a social innovation database for water and climate solutions covering the following aspects: governance, capacity development, business development and technology. ICLEI also contributes to the development of project outputs such as policy briefs, social innovation factsheets, roadshows and innovation bridge events, as well as MOOCs. We also work on communication and visibility of the project, and building relationships between partners and their networks, raising awareness of the water related challenges, and opportunities related to climate change impacts with proposed adaptation measures.

The project ‘Urban-Rural Assembly’ (URA) aims to build a better understanding of the urban-rural constellation and interdependencies that are emerging along China’s vast urbanisation corridors, and which can no longer be described through traditional binaries of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. The region Huangyan-Taizhou, part of the Chinese ‘prefectural-level city‘ Taizhou, will be examined as an exemplary case study and learning context: a rapidly urbanising region where diverse and seemingly contradictory transformation processes take place simultaneously in close proximity, producing multiple dimensions of urban-rural interrelations. URA combines leading partners in the field of sustainable urban and regional transformation in Germany and China. ICLEI supports the research project in creating an interface between the research partners and policy makers, both within the case region as well as nationally in China and internationally. Through the development of transferable strategic instruments, enabling tools and guidelines, the project seeks to foster knowledge dissemination and transfer across the coastal urbanisation corridor – contributing to the urgent need for creative approaches towards localisation and implementation of the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda in China and beyond.

With support from the Korea Environmental Corporation and the World Bank, ICLEI is supporting the cities of Dharamshala and Kullu-Manali in Himachal Pradesh in the preparation of solid waste management strategies and action plans, as a pilot to improve integrated solid waste management for the mountainous regions of Pakistan, India, and Nepal. The project supports these cities to collect data for solid waste management, conduct surveys and waste quantification and characterisation studies, and finally, provide inputs to waste management strategies for mountainous regions. In order to improve solid waste management in the region, the project aims to analyze current solid waste management in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, India and Nepal, provide suggestions on integrated strategies and models for each country, and to develop guidelines for sustainable solid waste management in the region.

ICLEI conducted Municipal Solid Waste Management Exposure Workshops for more than 100 urban local bodies and strengthened their institutional capacities towards collection, treatment, disposal and efficient management of various types and categories of waste. The project also developed training modules, identified external experts and facilitated site visits for participants from local governments. Five 3-day workshops were conducted at different locations as suggested by the National Institute of Urban Affairs. The workshops and site visits will help the municipal officials to develop an understanding of the commonly faced issues, challenges and constraints of managing municipal solid waste. The capacities of the municipal staff will be built to effectively execute municipal solid waste projects and plans as per the mandate of the revised Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.