Our Activities

This proposal outlines a mechanism that could offer comprehensive support and a replicable approach that could be applied globally to assist local and regional governments to develop robust and transformative projects, and to help them to navigate in the complex world of technical and financial options, meet in person potential partners, and so contributing to close the above described gap between supply and demand.

New guidance enables U.S. cities and counties to include forests and trees within their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, a key activity to ensure representation of local forestry and land use consideration in climate action planning. Developed in partnership with the Woods Hole Research Center and World Resources Institute (WRI), and funded by Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA) and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Forest and Land Use Appendix to ICLEI’s U.S. Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions will help fill a critical gap in enabling communities to develop climate action related to land management at a local level.

As the frequency and intensity of climate change related disasters increase, local communities are severely impacted. In response to recent climate related disasters on the continent, ICLEI Africa is stepping up to support cities in reducing their disaster risk. We draw on two decades of on-the-ground work in Africa, building and strengthening resilience through proactive planning.

ICLEI has supported Fórum CB27 since its creation in 2012, and, in 2017, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation invited ICLEI to contribute to the institutional strengthening of the group through a strategic planning process and regular facilitation of CB27 meetings. ICLEI’s mission is directly connected to the Forum’s activities, in that it seeks to connect cities and local governments dedicated to sustainable development.
As a strategic partner of CB27, ICLEI supports its planning, content curation and meeting preparation, communication strategies, advocacy cooperation, and operation of the Executive Secretariat of the Forum, as well as actively participates in meetings and activites and coordinates advocacy strategies.

Through the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project, local governments in sub-Saharan Africa adopt a model of inclusive climate research and action, effectively bridging the divide between science and policy by responding to city identified challenges with the co-development of relevant climate information. The targeted Southern African local governments participate in city consultations – called Learning Labs – to facilitate knowledge sharing and generation, learning, networking and policy advice. The cities are also exposed to training (at political and technical levels), partnership development and co-production of robust and scale relevant climate information. FRACTAL has established new methodologies for improved collaboration and innovative transdisciplinary research by integrating across disciplines, nations, sectors, and between academia and society. This collaboration is rooted in Africa through effective partnerships between individuals and organisations, and between participants in Africa and elsewhere. This new approach to fundamental climate research is strongly framed by the information needs required for context relevant African societal decisions.

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.

ICLEI connects like-minded cities to exchange experiences and lessons learned on the way towards the circular economy, advocates the necessity of closing-the-loop thinking, identifies cities’ circular good practices, shares the latest knowledge and provides suggestions on mainstreaming the circular development in urban strategic planning and policies.
ICLEI raises the attention on the circular development in cities and encourages multi-stakeholders dialogues by facilitating peer-learning and exchange. ICLEI pairs up like-minded cities and supports organizing on-site visits, workshops and offline meetings (whenever resources available), and distributes newsletters to feature good practices, innovation, and latest reports.
Through the Coalition, local governments from Europe and East Asia are increasingly recognizing the circular development concept as a potential approach to achieve mutual-benefits, and are gradually shifting their mindsets from the end-of-pipe treatment of waste towards closed-loop thinking. This mindset change can have a positive influence on local governments’ actions to achieve zero-carbon society and the SDGs. Cities can further review, synergize and optimize existing policies and strategies via the lenses of circularity and life-cycle management.

ICLEI provides technical guidance by participating in GCoM’s technical working groups, which address mitigation and adaptation in specific data-related sub-groups, including Emissions and Targets; Climate Action Planning; Resilience; and Access to Energy. ICLEI also participates in non-data related groups, including Access to Finance; Governance and Regional Coherence; Research; and Communications.

ICLEI has a representative in each group and sub-group, submits written comments and attends calls and in-person meetings. The goal is to unify and centralize how data are reported, using which channels, and how is it communicated to global stakeholders. ICLEI also provides data revision towards GCoM requirements for ICLEI Members and network of cities.

By participating in GCoM, Korean local governments can make their climate actions more ambitious and consistent through reporting and learn from their peers about ambitious climate actions.In order to support Korean local government participation in GCoM, ICLEI organizes GCoM sessions at international climate events such as Seoul Mayors Forum, supports local governments’ reporting to ICLEI-CDP unified reporting system, translates guidance and materials (e.g. Common Reporting Framework, CDP reporting guidance), invites local governments to various networking opportunities on urban climate action, publicizes their activities related to GCoM initiative and outreachs to cities of potential interest with Korean promotional materials.

The Forum diverse and engaging activities included the involvement of numerous organizations, institutions and academia; including the ICLEI Kaohsiung Capacity Center as one of organizers.

The implementation of corporate sustainability initiatives is the main activities that are now expected from the international business community, not only for their own sustainable thrive but for the world’s common interests. To bridge the gap and open the dialogue between public and private sectors on sustainability in Asian region, ICLEI KCC will host a parallel session on Cities Initiatives during the opening day of Global Corporate Sustainability Forum, in cooperation with the Organizer, Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE), ICLEI Member Cities in Taiwan and other local partners.

3 of ALP Steering Committee Members from the Philippines, Mongolia(Ulaanbaatar) are invited to speak at the Forum and joined ALP-member track, including official calls on national authorities related to energy regulations and policies, technical visits to e-mobility in postal services, smart energy communities in New Taipei City and circular economic development in Taoyuan City.

ICLEI created a mobile app to educate homeowners and residents about the impacts of natural hazards and extreme weather, and how people can prepare for these events in their home.

ICLEI South America’s “First steps for local action” GHG emissions inventories online training addresses the initial phases for cities to start acting on climate. It offers local authorities introductory concepts of the challenges cities are facing with climate change and guides them through practical guidelines to tackle the problem, based on the GreenClimateCities (GCC) methodology. To support autonomy and leadership in cities, the training also highlighted the technologies available to support GHG emissions evaluation and analysis, through Clearpath and CLIMAS platforms, and showcased testimonies from cities who have already started or succeed in the process.

These online trainings have been held since 2016, but in 2018 it was the first time it was available in a new and dynamic format online.The training was offered to the local staff of all South American ICLEI members during a period of 5-weeks course, comprised of informative videos, supplemental reading resources, live webinars with specialists, quizzes and remote support.

As a result of the training, local government representatives have a better understanding of the challenge they have ahead of them and will be able to conduct the GCC methodology in an independent way, with ICLEI’s support.

In 2010, ICLEI USA created the protocols by which U.S. local governments account for emissions at both the community and municipal scale and in 2013, developed ClearPath, an emissions inventory and management software application, which is the manifestation of these protocols. In combination, these activities have reduced the financial and administrative burden to measure and manage GHG emissions. 900 U.S. local governments have established ClearPath accounts. ICLEI USA technical advisors support users who developed 336 community inventories and 196 municipal inventories in 2019. Occasionally, local governments outsource the inventory development to ICLEI USA. In 2019, ICLEI USA developed inventories for: Manhattan Beach, San Jose and Carson California; Boulder, Lakewood and Northglenn Colorado; Boca Raton, Oakland Park, and Pinecrest Florida; Beacon, New York; Beaverton Oregon; Denton and Plano Texas; and King County, Washington.

ICLEI advances global dialogue and action that links science, policy and practice, by convening city leaders and practitioners with research and academia, national governments and entrepreneurs to examine policy gaps and opportunities. This work supports the global Innovate4Cities accelerator that defines research and innovation priorities to inform national research agendas and analyses – as galvanized by the Edmonton Declaration in support of CitiesIPCC process.

The Global Climate City Challenge is part of a new partnership under the umbrella of Global Urbis, an ambitious global initiative announced during the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017, that provides cities and local governments around the world with technical assistance and financing for climate action. The Challenge is a collaboration between the Global Covenant of Mayors and the European Investment Bank with city networks including ICLEI and C40, as well as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). ICLEI screened project applications and proposed an initial short list of 20 projects to be considered for the final list of 6 to access technical assistance. The frontrunners were announced at the COP25, out of which 2 ICLEI Transformative Actions Program projects were selected in Recife, Brazil and in Jambi City, Indonesia.