Our Activities

ICLEI builds the capacity of local governments to adapt to climate change and increase their resilience through suite of solutions including planning tools, vulnerability and risk assessment resources, stakeholder consultation workshops and peer and partner networking opportunities.

ICLEI and the SCBD collaborated in preliminary consultations with Parties and selected subnational and local authorities on the need for implementation of NBSAPs by subnational governments. ICLEIwas tasked with guidelines for an integrated approach in the development and implementation of national, subnational and local biodiversity strategies and action plan and undertake capacity development.

The Guidelines provide detailed and comprehensive guidance on thirteen general areas for action to promote integration, coordination and cooperation, applicable to national, subnational and local levels of government. To develop the guidelines, ICLEI consulted with selected national and subnational governments; developed comparative analysis of their biodiversity strategies and action plans; presentated of the draft guidelines at CBD COP 13; and led capacity building workshops in Africa and India.

ICLEI is implementing the BEA project Phase 2 in Africa through three initiatives.
1. BEA Africa Regional Network: ICLEI Africa coordinates the Africa Regional Network for BEA where organisations working across Africa on issues of building efficiency share lessons, current practices, and coordinate their work. Through this network, organisations are able to connect and align their efforts to ensure cities across Africa are well-supported to improve building efficiency. ICLEI is actively recruiting cities and private sector partners to be members of the BEA Partnership.
2. BEA Deep Dive in City of Tshwane, South Africa: ICLEI Africa, in partnership with the Green Building Council of South Africa, is implementing one of eight global BEA Deep Dive engagements in the City of Tshwane, South Africa.
3. Leadership Grant: Audit and training of implementtion of South Africa’s national building efficiency legisation in three municipalities in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

ICLEI is the Local Building Efficiency Accelerator Lead Partner, taking responsibility to plan and execute the work plan, to coordinate participating cities and stakeholders, and to facilitate the engagement among business and local governments in East Asia.

ICLEI maintains a long-lasting relationship with participating cities and partners by building an active and easy-to-reach communication channel, provides technical assistance to support cities in applying for international funding, and assists cities to develop commitment and form a feasible work plan.

Through the Building Efficiency Accelerator, local governments in China and Mongolia have ICLEI as a reliable partner to inquire about practical information for policy design and planning, to have access to international funding opportunities for project implementation and replication, and to strengthen the relationship with non-governmental stakeholders. The Building Efficiency Accelerator and ICLEI support local governments to cross the institutional, financial, and behavioral barriers.

The Building Energy Efficiency Accelerator (BEA) assists sub-national governments in speeding up the process of adoption of best-practice policies and implementation of building efficiency projects, with the goal of doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvement in the building sector by 2030.

ICLEI is the regional lead for all activities in Southeast Asia.The BEA process of engagement in a city includes support for: Assessing and prioritizing locally-appropriate policies and actions; Implementing actions, through matching needs with expertise, resources and tools; Tracking action and documenting progress, and sharing lessons learned. BEA engages cities through a menu of policy options and key actions based on needs, and activities the partnership can provide in each location. Cities prioritize policies and activities, and the partnership connect them to resources and engagement around those priorities.

ICLEI has been appointed as the BEA Regional Lead in South Asia to act as the lead organization to plan and execute the work plan alongside Nagpur City. ICLEI acts as as a technical advisor and will facilitate stakeholder engagement and events, technical support, city recognition and peer learning. The project will build local capacity that can continue building efficiency activities after direct BEA assistance ends.

ICLEI is compiling a guidance document for "Buying Social". It provides guidance for procurers on how to include socially responsible considerations in their tenders. The European Commission will publish the final guidance document. To develop the guidance ICLEI is also compiling a range of good practice examples to illustrate the guidance provided.

BuyZET, coordinated by ICLEI, aims to understand and optimize the impact of public procurement activities on transport patterns in cities – and to find innovative and sustainable delivery solutions for goods and services, which can help to address these challenges. The goals of the project are to boost demand for zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) and other zero emission urban delivery solutions on the European market, and to develop procurement plans to achieve zero emission urban delivery of goods and services to the public sector. To achieve the project goals, participating cities identified the areas of procurement spend with the biggest influence on the movement of goods and services. They developed plans for innovative zero emission procurement activities for these high priority areas in co-operation with key market actors and other stakeholders. ICLEI provided support for the cities in these activities, as well as established cross-border networking and experience exchange between consortium partners, other European cities, and further stakeholders. The project also resulted in a series of recommendations for both public authorities and national and European policy makers in support of zero emission delivery of goods and services.

ICLEI will lead the implementation of activities in Germany with 10 local governments and 1 region and work on the dissemination and exploitation of the projects results. Aline to this, workshops for local and regional authorities at a national level will be organized, project’s communication activities will be established and informational events in participating countries will be run. The aim is to capitalize on the project outputs, trigger and facilitate planning for carbon neutrality at a local and regional level more widely across Europe and encourage the replication of exemplar sustainable energy and climate resilient projects.

The project aims to improve the NDCs, including increasing ambition, as part of the Paris Agreement NDC update process; In addition to assisting in the accelerated implementation of NDCs, providing knowledge and technical training in the country. CAEP will provide support to countries through existing support programs of its institutional and associate members and through a dedicated Technical Assistance Fund that will use funding where existing support is not sufficient to meet the needs identified by countries. The Technical Assistance Fund is a joint financing mechanism with contributions from various development partners that will allocate resources to institutional members and Associates of the Partnership to respond to requests for updating and implementing the NDC.The World Resources Institute, as host of the Fund, will administer the contract, while the Partnership Support Unit is responsible for programmatic implementation.

Through the project, ICLEI will support in the preparation of the Vulnerability Index and Climate Change Adaptation Plan for the city of Recife, which aims to identify and prioritize concrete measures to adapt to climate change in the city, based on the analysis vulnerability and climate risk, addressing the environmental, economic and social dimensions in a way that contributes to building the city's climate resilience in the face of dangers related to climate change. The project will take place through the city vulnerability analysis for climate change and the identification of priority areas of intervention with emphasis on priority intervention areas (hotspots).

The ICLEI team provided examples of how communities similar to Lake Oswego approach climate mitigation – and reviewed existing documents related to the existing CAP and original GHG Inventory.
Findings were summarized in a memo and presented to staff.
ICLEI Evaluated planned vs achieved emissions reductions using The ClearPath planning module and its default reduction measure types. In addition, ICLEI developed highly flexible “user-defined” calculators to represent reduction measures of interest to the City.
To conclude the analysis, ICLEI applied the Temperate software application to provide Lake Oswego with downscaled climate data to indicate the expected local climate change impacts on the community. From here, ICLEI worked with the community to conduct a vulnerability assessment.
Finally, ICLEI developed a set of Implementation Strategies with outputs from ClearPath's forecasting module and the vulnerability assessment.
The intent of the strategies is to convey information about the intent of each action, how to measure progress towards targets, highlight successes and identify implementation barriers that can be addressed through ICLEI membership support.

ICLEI works with four Brazilian cities to develop an action plans to achieve emissions neutrality and climate resilience by 2050. This includes emissions inventories, scenario modeling, vulnerability analysis and adaptation actions, and the implementation of already consolidated tools, such as CIRIS (developed by C40).

ICLEI is responsible for project implementation in all four partner cities, including preparation of Climate Resilient City Action Plan for four Indian partner cities – Coimbatore, Rajkot, Siliguri and Udaipur – that addresses both climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation using ClimateResilientCities methodology; strengthening the capacities of cities to identify, plan and implement measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for enhancing resilience to climate change; implementation of quick win projects to showcase reduction of GHG emissions; identification and planning for bankable projects based on requirements of the cities for large scale implementation of climate resilience building activities; and peer learning and exchange. Measures developed as a result of this project are being integrated in municipal budget to mainstream climate resilience in city development.

Building Resilience and Adaptation Capacity (BRACE) bridges the gap between tools and information and their successful application in meaningful and influential decision making processes. ICLEI held a series of workshops throughout Manitoba on barriers and opportunities to advance climate adaptation action throughout the Province. These high impact consultation and engagement workshops targeted decision makers and stakeholders in four key sectors: 1) Indigenous and northern communities, organizations, 2) Business sector organizations, 3) Municipal communities or regions and watershed planning organizations, and 4) Infrastructure decision makers and organizations.