Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF),The Global Platform for Sustainable Cities (GPSC) is a partnership and knowledge platform that promotes integrated solutions and cutting-edge support for cities seeking to improve their urban sustainability. ICLEI, together with WRI and C40, serve on the GPSC Resource Team. The Resource Team facilitates peer exchange and provides high-level technical assistance, capacity development and curated knowledge products to local and regional governments to advance sustainable, and integrated, urban development. The GPSC RT serves local and regional governments by implementing a needs assessment and offering peer exchange, delivering training and promotional events and webinars and creating new and curated knowledge products. By situating city-level implementation projects in a broad sustainability framework, ICLEI, as a member of the GPSC RT, offers a holistic approach to urban development.

ICLEI supports the leading national sustainable cities initiative in Japan. The initiative started as Environmental Model City Initiative in 2008, evolved into FutureCIty Initiative in 2011, and matured as SDGs FutureCity Initiative in 2018. ICLEI and member cities have been actively involved in the Initiative from the beginning; and recently contributed to The 7th International Forum focused on the localization of SDGs.

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.

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.

The EcoMobility Alliance is a network of selected committed cities led by innovators and visionaries, supported by experts and businesses. The EcoMobility Alliance cities are a select group of ambitious cities that have achieved positive results in specific dimensions of sustainable mobility, and that strive to reduce their dependence on fossil fuel-based personal automobiles. The vision is that of vibrant cities, where communities and organizations can access goods, services, people and information in an ecomobilemanner. Through a service-oriented structure, collective learning exercises, peer-to-peer exchanges and joint activities, Alliance Cities help each other to reach self-set goals. An Alliance Secretariat along with a group of partners support Alliance Cities through their expertise, experience, and technology. ICLEI works with the Alliance to promote and advocate for ecomobility in cities, towns and rural settlements on the basis of its beneficial effects on health conditions, air cleanness, noise avoidance, and efficient use of public space, energy efficiency and citizens’ savings.

ICLEI advances achievement of state and local sustainability goals by assisting California cities and counties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save energy. The support is offered to any local government free of charge, and can be a light-touch (answering questions) to in-depth assistance (completion of an GHG inventory).

In addition to technical support, the program convenes an annual peer-exchange event, offers virtual training, and recognizes communities that hit milestones in clean energy and climate action. ICLEI’s GHG emissions management tool, ClearPath, has been adapted to meet California specific requirements and opportunities. The program makes the software tool available at no cost to all local governments statewide; provides technical support in the development of GHG inventories and climate action plans, and shares out best practices observed.

Through the Reflecting Cities project, ICLEI aims to provide African cities with spaces for reflection to assist them in engaging with the complex urban planning challenges they have identified. The project facilitates a number of exchanges to support urban planners (including representatives from national and local governments) in learning from the experiences of other cities, supported by experts. The project cities have each identified a case study of a complex planning topic with which they are currently wrestling The topics being explored include waste management, greening and traffic management. Based on the technical skills required for each case study, the project provides opportunities to engage with and learn from experts in relevant fields while benefiting from inter-city learning.

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.

ICLEI promotes low carbon urban freight policies and practices addressing climate change mitigation and the ambitions of NDCs. By highlighting ecologistics as a priority area for local and national governments the project raises awareness, collects and develops policy recommendations, develops action plans and guides pioneering cities to exemplary action. The project strengthens institutional capacity through multi-level stakeholder participation, develops an urban freight emission assessment tool, implements demonstration projects in cities, and makes national policy recommendations. A project platform accessible globally shares knowledge on best practices and connects local governments to solution providers.

Over the course of the PACMUN project, ICLEI has worked with over 450 Mexican municipalities to develop GHG inventories, collect data and define local climate action plans. Project activities focus on building the capacity of municipal staff to establish goals and prioritize actions on climate and resilience. Municipalities also work with ICLEI to report their climate and data and can voluntarily submit their climate action plans to the Ministry of Environment.

ICLEI works to make ICT Fair improving the lives of workers and those impacted along different stages of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supply chain through research, campaigning, capacity building and advocacy.

ICLEI leads the dissemination and communication. In this context a plan is delivered responding to the particularities of the rural areas, that are often “hard to reach” and both physically and technologically remote. The team engages with national and local independent production companies for television and radio broadcasts as internet use may not be available or widespread in all rural communities.
Furthermore, ICLEI supports local partners in developing their local plans through capacity building, including one local communication workshop and one local communication webinar to provide additional training.
ICLEI, together with UNESCO, enhances the link between RURITAGE and a wider community of interested parties at global level based in the mandate of sustainable development and performed by their networks. More precisely, ICLEI supports the cooperation with the countries covered by the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) by identifying key conferences and events where the RURITAGE Replication Tool Box can be disseminated.
Finally, ICLEI hosts a Dialogue Breakfast with European policy-makers in Brussels using the ICLEI Breakfast@Sustainability series.

The overarching goal of the “CitiesSHIFT: Capacity building and networking for climate- and people-friendly mobility” project is to support cities to identify challenges and opportunities of urban mobility system in hope that the city could shift towards more sustainable modes of travel i.e. walking, cycling, shared and public transport. Building a healthy living environment: Urban form and sustainable mobility system contribute to a healthy urban environment. This TWG helps cities to get a big picture of what the residents need and the kind of city that the policymakers would like to create. Three main aspects: managing urban form and public space to benefit all residents; providing integrated, multimodal and ecomobile travel options. Emerging mobility trends: The emerging mobility trends that cities have seen in recent years range from electric mobility to shared mobility systems, presenting new opportunities to reduce individual ownership and usage of private vehicles. The goal of this TWG is to support local governments to understand the different policy and market drivers to maximize the benefits of electric mobility and new mobility services to support an ecomobile vision.

Through the project, ICLEI will support 20 cities, with emission inventories, targets and guidelines for mitigation. It includes preparation of an inventory of GHG emissions and atmospheric pollutants; future emission scenarios for 5, 10, 20 and 40 years, with reduction targets; institutional implementation strategies and inventory review mechanisms; and training of RMC technicians in the GPC methodology to allow the initiative to be internally replicated in the inventory review processes.

ICLEI worked with partners to organize the Low-Carbon City 2.0 Professional Series Workshops and The International Conference on Mitigation Strategies for Green Transformation in Cities. International experts from Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia were invited to give a series of trainings on decarbonizing actions, urban energy efficiency improvement and low-carbon transformation featuring case studies in East Asia cities and the world. The in-depth discussions between local officers and international experts enhanced the sense of responsibility of carbon reduction in various departments, and promoted the role of local governments in changing from “regulation” to the supporting multi-stakeholders in the new climate and low carbon regime.