The project promotes multilevel governance policy dialogue, strengthen capacities and encourage the development of national, regional and local enabling frameworks to unlock local RE potential, also addressing energy efficiency. ICLEI will showcase how local projects and policies contribute to the achievement of national climate and energy targets in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other policy objectives such as energy security and job creation, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.

ICLEI promotes the implementation of short-lived climate pollutant reduction strategies by mobilizing and empowering the health sector and demonstrating the full range of health benefits that can be achieved at the city level. A significant transformation in the current trajectory of air and climate pollutant emissions requires increased engagement, commitment and action at the global, regional, national and local levels. Health arguments can be a powerful incentive and driver for such action, in particular on the city level, where benefits of local policy change translate directly to health benefits among the local population.

Non-energy-related benefits play a key role in the deep renovation of existing buildings. ICLEI focuses on the creation of a substantial increase of the real estate value of the existing buildings through a significant energy and architectural transformation like aside or façade addictions, rooftop extensions or even an entire new building construction, to reach the goal of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings and extreme renovation.

Since 2008, ICLEI’s Cities Biodiversity Center (CBC) has convened successive summits as official parallel events to the Conference on Biological Diversity COP, to enable local and subnational governments engagement. These Summits have resulted in strong political outcomes, including the Quintana Roo (2016) and Sharm El-Sheikh (2018) Communiques, Nagoya Plan of Action on Subnational Governments, Cities and Other Local Authorities for Biodiversity (2011 – 2020), adopted at COP 10 in 2010, and of many decisions on local and subnational governments. Through these outcomes, ICLEI CBC has shaped a global policy environment that supports local and regional governments in their efforts to scale up and mainstream nature in sustainable urban development worldwide. ICLEI has also developed a dedicated website for local and subnational governments to advance the Action Agenda for Nature and People and the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and holds monthly informational webinars. The CBC supports the work of CitiesWithNature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Connecting Nature front-runner cities will draw on their experiences and work with fast-follower cities in a capacity-building role. The project will expand upon existing urban sustainability and innovation initiatives, create a reference framework of clear and useful indicators for the implementation and evaluation of nature-based solutions, build expertise and competency in all cities for innovative urban planning, policy and solution implementation, generate economic opportunities for a diversity of urban actors in Europe, and nurture urban community support, idea creation, active stakeholder participation and idea implementation at local levels and expansion and replication at a global level, through the global reach of ICLEI. The ICLEI European Secretariat will, through its regional offices in East Asia, South Korea and Brazil, in collaboration with local partners in these regions, work on drawing down matching regional funding and establish local Connecting Nature linked initiatives that will adapt and embed mechanisms for the co-production of solutions in those locations and cities.

Human activities contribute a significant and growing proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the increased demand for energy and other services in urban areas – also driven by rapid population growth – exacerbating the climate challenge. There is an urgent need for actions that will substantially contribute to the Paris Agreements climate targets, to stay well below 1.5 Degrees Celsius.

Under the Urban-LEDS Phase II project funded by the European Commission, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and ICLEI are jointly implementing this project addressing integrated climate action in local governments and their cities. Using ICLEI’s GreenClimateCities process methodology, technical guidance and capacity development is provided to selected local governments, also mobilizing cities to commit to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), exploring access to financing and supporting multilevel governance to enable effective action.

Procura+ is a network of European public authorities and regions that connect, exchange and act on sustainable and innovation procurement. The network has 45 participating public authorities from 16 European countries. ICLEI offers the Procura+ participants a range of activities and resources to advance their sustainable public procurement work, including recognition through the Procura+ Awards; a city twinning program to facilitate staff exchanges; a platform to share plans and publicize successes; education and professional development opportunities; and the Procura+ manual, an accessible guide supporting public authorities in successfully implementing sustainable public procurement.

In the last 30 years, climate change, coupled with unplanned, rapid urbanization, generated significant development challenges worldwide. ICLEI has implemented City Learning Labs FRACTAL to periodically gather a broad range of knowledge-holders and decision-makers in targeted cities to work together on developing a deep, shared understanding of critical burning issues linked to climate that cities face.

Through CitiesWithNature (CWN), local and regional governments are able to enhance the potential of nature to provide essential ecosystem services and solutions for the overall health of human habitats and urban areas. Through this platform, cities can engage, connect, learn, share, act, and inspire each other in the way of biodiversity and urban nature. ICLEI enables its local and regional constituency to access and influence global biodiversity processes and provides a one-stop-shop, or “big tent” under which projects, initiatives, and programs aimed at enhancing nature can be celebrated, shared, and promoted. ICLEI develops strategic global partnerships and the ongoing and continuous development of the various components of the CWN platform. CWN is recognized by the SCBD as the official vehicle for local and subnational governments to report their commitments and ambitions for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

Rapid IUWM aims to build the capacity of urban local bodies to understand interlinkages between water, wastewater and storm water; and adopt an integrated urban water management planning and implementation approach through multi stakeholder involvement. Two local urban bodies in Rajasthan (Kishangargh and Ajmer) developed an IUWM based vision for their cities and developed an action plan to achieve the IUWM vision. Both the cities implemented a pilot project based on prioritized strategy selected through stakeholder consultations. The project also builds the capacity of local authorities to create, enable, institutionalize and promote inclusive governance mechanisms undertaking water sector reforms for closing the urban water loop and conservation of water bodies within the cities.

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.