Our Activities

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.

In nearly three decades of work, ICLEI has developed, tested and scaled up methodologies to guide the way towards sustainable urban development at the local level. This rich experience accumulated allows us to apply a common framework for our global projects and initiatives, which currently follows the stages: analysis, action and acceleration, and in each one follows a step-by-step guideline. This track can be applied to a variety of themes – from low emission to nature-based development – and promotes a cyclical path that allows the continuous improvement of the governments in our Network. This year’s “Cities + Sustainable – ICLEI South America Solutions Portfolio” highlights the following opportunities and initiatives ICLEI provides cities and regions in South America.

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.

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 enables mobility planning authorities across Europe to embrace sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMP) as the European-wide strategic planning approach, especially in countries where the take-up is low and the negative effects of transport are severe. The project also improves urban transport efficiency while effectively mitigating the negative effects of transport and enhancing the attractiveness of Europe’s urban centers through a strategic planning approach based on integration, participation and evaluation principles, one that broadly implements sustainable urban mobility policies and measures. The project analyzes and verifies specific adoption needs for SUMPs in European local authorities in order to identify the most effective tools for SUMP development and actively support their adoption in various types of cities.

The African Capital Cities Sustainability Forum (ACCSF) draws together mayors and technical officers from the continent’s most prominent cities to provide a guiding light for how African cities must think about the future and lead sustainability efforts. It facilitates the exchange of knowledge and learning and provides a platform for exploring how to develop truly African solutions to African problems. The event marshals the collective power of capital cities to contribute to, and influence, the pan-African and global discourse on sustainability.

ICLEI, as the co-convener of the ACCSF, is responsible for the
content development and program design of the ACCSF. By hosting the annual event, which brings together mayors and city managers of African capital cities, ICLEI facilitates the exchange knowledge and information on potential interventions, opportunities and threats that influence the potential for economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection.

ICLEI East Asia supported the Seoul Metropolitan Government in organizing the 9th Northeast Asia Forum on Air Quality Improvement as a co-organizer. The Forum was attended by officials of 35 local governments, including all EACAC cities except for Guiyang. On this occasion, Tokyo, Beijing, and Shenzhen introduced their policies on vehicle emissions reduction; Sichuan presented in the stationary emissions reduction section. ICLEI East Asia shared its experience of strengthening regional cooperation and collaboration through EACAC together with other city networks including C40, CCAC, and GUAPO.

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.

The SPIPA program supports our efforts within Australia and seeks to explore alignment and synergies with other national and subnational programs and offer a unified climate action methodology and reporting structure. The SPIPA Initiative provides a final report that may be used as a pathway for partnership describing the various roles of stakeholders and the possible role they could take in governance, leadership, program development, support, advocacy, funding and technical capacity related to the Global Covenant of Mayors. ICLEI Oceania has completed the consultation and development of strategic reports for direction setting. This has provided the pathway

ICLEI offers a simple and convenient online process for pre-screened installers to compete for city-region bids, making it easier for North American communities to switch to solar energy.

This project will support regional governments with existing GHG reduction targets to achieve their targets, and for the ones without targets, the project will help governments to set and achieve them through the improved capacity to track GHG emission levels in detail – as well as the impacts of mitigation actions. ICLEI is supporting in the development of multi- governance policy and strategy dialogues. By supporting state and regional MRV systems and aligning them with their national counterparts, this project will promote the uptake of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (and their 2019 refinement) across states and regions globally with several subsequent benefits such as the increased consistency between different levels of governments, enhanced links between regional data sup- pliers and national data compilers and further identification of large and additional emission reduction opportunities.

We engage in the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) to advance sustainable urban mobility in developing countries and emerging economies with a special focus on cities in Africa by city-to-city exchange, business to government dialogues, webinar and workshops.

The way the world heats its buildings uses fossil fuel in an unsustainable way. By providing the methods, data, and tools to enable more sophisticated thermal energy system planning rapidly and cheaply, ICLEI accelerates the multi-government and stakeholder dialogues in Europe and beyond on decarbonizing heating and cooling in an integrated energy system.

SPP Regions promoted the creation and expansion of European regional networks of municipalities working together on sustainable public procurement (SPP) and public procurement of innovation (PPI). The regional networks help increase the capacity of public bodies for SPP and PPI, and send a stronger signal of demand for sustainability to suppliers. They provide support, improve skills and increase regional impact.

ICLEI supported the establishment of new procurement networks in 8 European regions. All participating networks implemented eco-innovative tenders achieving significant CO2 savings, which ICLEI supported through an intensive capacity building program. The project has produced a series of reports and guidance on sustainable procurement, including four key SPP and PPI topics: market engagement, life cycle costing, output or performance-based specifications, and circular procurement. The series of “”eco-innovative”” was published as guidance material as well. The project has also produced “”how-to”” videos on various aspects of sustainable procurement.

Through Ambitious City Promises, target local governments across Southeast Asia participate in in-country consultations to facilitate capacity building, policy advice and technology transfer support; develop new or improved comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventories; actively engage city residents and key local climate stakeholders; prepare concrete climate action plans – called City Promises – that include ambitious targets and integrate community pledges; initiate implementation of City Promises through pilot projects; report aggregated city plans, actions and achievements; and engage in learning and cooperation opportunities with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and other cities.

Through Ambitious City Promises, ICLEI aims to develop and deploy bottom-up models of climate action planning, establish lasting mechanisms for knowledge sharing, and contribute to local, national and global climate goals.

The Promise of Seoul, a comprehensive climate strategy adopted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government at the ICLEI World Congress in 2015, is at the heart of Ambitious City Promises. It provides a model of effective climate action at the community level, showing that cities can be both engines of growth and global leaders on climate action by establishing inclusive low emission urban economies.