When New York City announced intentions to divest city pension funds from fossil fuel reserve owners by 2022, the move positioned NYC at the center of the global divestment movement. Providing the first in-depth look at the steps NYC took to reach a divestment commitment, ICLEI’ s case study shows how the the largest municipal pension system in the United States has begun to divest billions of dollars from fossil fuels — and demonstrates to peer cities, large and small, that the principles and processes behind fossil fuel divestment are transferable to nearly any location where the will to divest exists.

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.

In order to ensure that the work of the UN fits the mission of the new sustainable development agenda and align with the spirit of enhanced collaboration with all levels of governments, ICLEI provides active contributions to the work of the UN Secretary General in the UN development system reform and 2019 UN Climate Summit, including development of customized strategies at the national level.

International Smart and Sustainable Transport Workshop was jointly hosted by ICLEI, Intelligent Transportation Society of Taiwan (ITS Taiwan) and the Advanced Public Transportation Research Center at the National Taiwan University (APTRC), in Taipei, 11-13 April 2018.

The three day workshop brought together young professionals in the public service in Asia-Pacific to discuss the challenges commonly faced by cities in the region – sustainable urban mobility, smart public transport, intelligent transport technology, and traffic safety. The workshop was facilitated by transportation experts from the public and private sectors in Chinese Taipei as well as the ICLEI Sustainable Mobility team.

To assist SI-CAT in its efforts, ICLEI is compiling the best practices in urban resilience and adaptation programs/projects taking place outside of Japan. In 2017-18, ICLEI conducted a set of interviews with local governments worldwide, analyzing those practices and submitted reports which will be used to help researchers and local government officials to further develop understanding of urban resilience and thus contributing to the development of adaptation plans at local level. In 2019, ICLEI will research and compile examples of how local governments are utilizing and systematically managing scientific data in its resilience planning and in its adaptation programs/projects.

The Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa supports Sub-Saharan African cities to tackle the interconnected challenges of climate change and access to sustainable energy. Started in 2015, CoM SSA is the African regional chapter of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM), the largest network of cities driving urban climate action.
CoM SSA provides broad-scale technical support to signatory cities through a Technical Helpdesk housed at ICLEI Africa, in Cape Town. At least 25 of these cities are provided with tailored technical support to develop and implement Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SEACAPs).
As the initiative matures, the focus moves from planning to implementation and more specifically on unlocking climate finance at the local level. Implementing partners facilitate dialogue with private sector and finance institutions, link signatory cities with relevant initiatives for funding, facilitate inter-government dialogue on climate finance and co-ordinate action between international commitments, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In order to take accurate actions against climate change, it is fundamental to know the exact data. ICLEI developed and maintains an online suite of emissions management tools packaged together in an application known as ClearPath. The software is based on the Greenhouse Gas emissions protocols and allows cities in North American cities to calculate, forecast, plan, and monitor emissions under all community and local government operations protocols.

ICLEI established a replicable framework that can be used by local governments throughout the country to attribute the observed changes in community GHG emissions inventories. Practitioners within cities and counties are now able to harness data to produce a more accurate depiction in changes to community-scale efficiency, communicate those trends more clearly, and use the data to evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs. The project components are development of the Contribution Analysis methodology; application of the techniques of Contribution Analysis to a range of community types to illustrate the drivers of change in various communities; production of a “replication toolkit” which clearly describes the steps in the process, provides guidance and templates for additional communities to adopt and take forward; and distrbution of these new resources widely.

Cities are growing and changing so fast that many authorities are struggling to cope. ICLEI’s aim is to boost sustainable urban development, through city-to-city International Urban Cooperation (IUC) on and foster sub-national actions under the Global Covenant of Mayors initiative. ICLEI supports regional innovation strategies and inter-regional cooperation for local and regional development.

ICLEI builds four Heritage Innovation Partnerships (HIPs). Each convened by a local partner and involving stakeholders from a range of organisations, including conservation organisations, community groups, local businesses engaged working alongside the research teams. The HIPs provide input into the development, analysis and outputs of the project.
ICLEI further produces a final report on the value added and use of HIPs to advance the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage.
In addition, ICLEI leads the Peer-Review Process among the four partnerships for overcoming existing problems, by building an understanding of the issues, situations and challenges and exploring new ideas, options and solutions. To enhance knowledge exchange between partnerships, city visits are set up. The fvisits aim to facilitate the transfer knowledge especially for what concerns decision making, implementation, governance, business models and advance the exploration of adaptive re-use of cultural heritage.
Finally ICLEI will be responsible for the overall coordination of all implementation and review activities and takes a role as ‘external coach’ for each implementing partnership.