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.

Building Resilience and Adaptation Capacity (BRACE) bridges the gap between tools and information and their successful application in meaningful and influential decision making processes. ICLEI held a series of workshops throughout Manitoba on barriers and opportunities to advance climate adaptation action throughout the Province. These high impact consultation and engagement workshops targeted decision makers and stakeholders in four key sectors: 1) Indigenous and northern communities, organizations, 2) Business sector organizations, 3) Municipal communities or regions and watershed planning organizations, and 4) Infrastructure decision makers and organizations.

ICLEI Oceania has posted a ‘science communications toolkit’ on the website, a collation of useful resources for sustainability students. Through the Young Writers Network students and graduates are empowered to become engaging communicators. Sharing evidence-based knowledge in credible and persuasive ways is paramount to the health of a mindful and engaged society, and is a prerequisite for sustainable development policies at all levels of government, especially local and regional governments, who interface most closely with communities. Through capacity building, and offering online resources and social networking events in partnership with other sustainability organisations in Melbourne, Australia, ICLEI is assisting academic researchers in translating their sustainability research into practice. ICLEI is assisting researchers and students in translating their sustainability research into practice.

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 East Asia and UNDRR co-hosted two workshops for two Chinese cities – Ningbo and Chengdu – to raise awareness of urban resilience with specific focuses on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction among local officials.
The workshops were structured in sessions of concept and tools introduction, and presentations of international and domestic cases on resilience and adaptation. Assessments of local resilience were also conducted via group exercises followed by suggestions on improvements.
ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR will continue to work to support 2 more local governments in China in implementing the Sendai Framework and other urban resilience objectives via workshops. It is expected that local disaster risk reduction planning will be better risk-informed when cities are equipped with skills to assess their respective risks, identify gaps, and ultimately lead to projects to address those gaps. A learning publication will be produced as the final output of the series, to share lessons learned on improving urban resilience in the context of global warming with other cities.

Through this project, ICLEI enables adoption, implementation and dissemination of the best practices adopted by various Indian cities and setting benchmarks of creating climate resilient and sustainable urban habitats.The Climate Smart Cities program integrates climate change considerations into the planning and implementation of projects of the Smart City Plans in the three cities of Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) and Kochi (Kerala). ICLEI is carrying out detailed assessment of Smart City plans of these cities to understand the baseline with reference to existing climate change measures and assess climate mitigation and adaptation potential of the smart city proposals. ICLEI is also contributing towards formulation of Government of India’s ‘Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework (CSCAF)’ and facilitating test run of this framework in the project cities and hand holding them to submit the indicators data on the CSCAF. The project will facilitate enhanced and effective roll-out of the smart city actions in the cities.

ICLEI and its local partner International Climate Development Institute (ICDI) deliver three training events that teach local stakeholders how to improve resilience mechanisms under the UNISDR frameworks; how to ensure the life quality in order to achieve Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) from social, environmental and financial perspectives, by implementing the “Disaster resilience scorecard for cities;” and how to enhance and introduce new technology in DRR and resilience to start new business models in the related industry. The trainings include lectures and facilitation of group presentations and discussions.

The IADAPT project addresses the water management issues in Indian cities, moving from existing water management practices that plan, establish and operate water supply, wastewater and storm water systems as separate entities to more integrated and collaborative approaches. ICLEI is helping two Indian cities – Solapur and Vijayawada to be climate resilient by developing an integrated catchment management plan guided by the decision support tool developed to move from conventional water management approaches to an ‘Integrated Approach’ based on the principles of IWRM and IUWM. The project will institutionalize climate adaptive water resource management at catchment level guided by participatory catchment planning, simple decision support tools, preparation of catchment level action plans and multi-pronged financing approaches.

Through the Supporting African Cities Development of Climate Action Plans (CAPs) project, ICLEI Africa supported Moroni (Comoros) and Nacala (Mozambique) in becoming leading Africa cities in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation action planning as well as supporting these cities with continued compliancy to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) initiative. Specifically, ICLEI is supported the cities in the development of Emissions Reduction Target Setting Reports and Climate Change Mitigation Action Plans under the GCoM mitigation reporting pathway; and co-developing Risk and Vulnerability Assessments and Climate Change Adaptation Action Plans under the GCoM adaptation reporting pathway for both cities.

ICLEI worked with Toronto Public Health to carry out research on strategies being used in other jurisdictions to manage extreme heat in older apartment buildings that don’t have air conditioning. The research included both a literature review and interviews with cities in North America and Europe. Eight key strategies were identified for managing extreme heat in Toronto apartment buildings, including active cooling, weatherization and insulation, increasing air circulation, reducing solar gain through windows, increasing natural ventilation, cooling/green/reflective external surfaces, minimizing internal heat generation and cooling on-site within the building.