ICLEI cohosted this side event “Social Innovations and Civic Engagement—City as Living Lab” at the 2019 Smart City Summit and Expo, Taipei. Participants from local governments learned about the smart city model of inclusive, ambitious climate action, mainstreaming public participation development strategies and creating new local leaders. Additionally, the event discussed how to test new ideas and co-create effective solutions in a Living Lab using agile methodologies. From idea identification to conceptualization and from rapid prototyping to testing, combining the Living Lab way of working and citizen engagement in a learning-by-doing approach shows great promise for inclusive city development.

ICLEI is implementing the BEA project Phase 2 in Africa through three initiatives.
1. BEA Africa Regional Network: ICLEI Africa coordinates the Africa Regional Network for BEA where organisations working across Africa on issues of building efficiency share lessons, current practices, and coordinate their work. Through this network, organisations are able to connect and align their efforts to ensure cities across Africa are well-supported to improve building efficiency. ICLEI is actively recruiting cities and private sector partners to be members of the BEA Partnership.
2. BEA Deep Dive in City of Tshwane, South Africa: ICLEI Africa, in partnership with the Green Building Council of South Africa, is implementing one of eight global BEA Deep Dive engagements in the City of Tshwane, South Africa.
3. Leadership Grant: Audit and training of implementtion of South Africa’s national building efficiency legisation in three municipalities in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

The City-Business Collaboration Accelerator (CiBiX) is a platform to increase engagement and collaboration between cities and businesses on city-led urban sustainability challenges. Through CiBiX, ICLEI provides a neutral platform that enables local government to take an active role in presenting their challenges to relevant private sector experts. Together they are able to participate in an early-engagement workshop that helps the city to receive new contributions as well as identify potential solutions and partnerships which they can choose to further explore. For businesses, it provides a strong networking opportunity to connect with local governments and learn exactly what their needs are in a particular sector or challenge scenario. The CiBiX Platform encourages cities to frame their urban challenges with a private sector engagement perspective- helping them to take the first step towards exploring potential partnerships relevant for their needs. The first service is a short-form ideation and early engagement workshop to stimulate an open and transparent interactive dialogue between a lead city and well-matched private sector representatives with a sustainability challenge framing.

ICLEI is one of organizers of the Global Corporate Sustainability Forum which brings together organizations, institutions and academia and features diverse and engaging activities. The implementation of corporate sustainability initiatives is one of the main activities that are now expected from the international business community, not only for their own long-term interests but for the world’s common interests. To bridge the gap and open the dialogue between public and private sectors on sustainability in Asia, ICLEI will host a parallel session on Cities Initiatives during the opening day of Global Corporate Sustainability Forum, in cooperation with the Organizer, Chinese Taipei Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE), ICLEI Member Cities in Chinese Taipei and other local partners.

ICLEI Innovation will select teams, startups, products, services and innovative processes in the segment of afforestation or urban green areas, which strengthen the management and sustainability of cities, promote green spaces, adopt solutions based on nature and generate measurable management results municipal public health. Through a public announcement inviting organizations for proposal submissiton, ICLEI will select 10 best proposals and start a mentoring process with the selected ones through the online traction e-learning platform and the growth path methodology. This project is expected to collect innovative and sustainable solutions to the challenges brought by local and regional governments.

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 leads the general dissemination effort of OpenHeritage, with a particular focus on reaching out to local authorities all over Europe, leveraging its vast municipality network with the policy and academia connections of the consortium as a whole.
ICLEI also contributes to the Observatory Cases, and to the Cooperative Heritage Labs, collecting and synthesizing information.

Under the Asia Regional Environmental Technology Cooperation project framework of the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (FECO), Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China, ICLEI supported FECO in conducting one Indian Environmental Industry Research Report, and two Environmental Industry Research Report Solid Waste and Wastewater Management Systems in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.

CLEI acted as the coordinator of all activities under this service agreement with FECO, and facilitated planning and implementation of the research projects with the engagement of ICLEI South Asia and ICLEI Southeast Asia. Three research reports were prepared as deliverables of the project and submitted to FECO, as guidance documents for Chinese’s environmental enterprises endeavor to engage with the Indian environmental management market, and solid waste and wastewater management in Indonesia and the Philippines. Through this project, ICLEI supported strengthening the cooperation between local governments and the private sector in the region on environmental industry and technology, in exploring possible solutions to the challenges of sustainable development cities are facing.

SOLUTIONSplus is coordinated by the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI) and joined by 45 worldwide partners. The project aims to enable transformational change towards sustainable urban mobility through innovative and integrated electric mobility solutions.

Project cities will be able to demonstrate different types of innovative and integrated e-mobility solutions, complemented by a comprehensive toolbox, capacity development and replication activities. SOLUTIONSplus works closely with the UN Environment and the International Energy Agency (IEA) on a joint global urban e-mobility program that will significantly boost replication and impact of this innovation action.

Promoting the project and its results among multiple beneficiaries is an important goal of the project. ICLEI therefor develops, implements, and monitors a detailed strategy for communication, dissemination, and exploitation. ICLEI will thereby safeguard the implementation and replication of developed solutions beyond the project’s lifetime. ICLEI will further develop a typology of city types that recognises different contexts.