Public buyers are supported in the identification of their needs and, once ready, connected with SMEs and start-ups able to develop innovative solutions responding to their requirements. A total of five regional procurement of innovation broker schemes will be piloted in the Upper Austria Region, Denmark, North Rhine Westfalia (Germany), Ireland and Andalusia (Spain), then scaled up to a European level. We test innovation procurement brokerage approaches at regional and European level, we support and carry out assessments of public authority needs and we engage with start-ups and SMEs across Europe to find innovative solutions to needs.

The project analyzed current strategies for waste prevention and management and assessed how they contribute towards resilience and resource efficiency. UrbanWINS developed and tested methods for designing and implementing eco-innovative strategic plans for waste prevention and management in 8 pilot cities. The strategic plans were created in a citizen engagement process and resulted in three pilot actions in each city. As part of UrbanWINS, the CityMatch program offered staff exchanges between waste management department of different cities to create cross-regional learning and exchanges.

ICLEI supported the UrbanWINS project with activities to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing between public authorities from different parts of the project’s regions as well as to carry out mutual benchmarking exercises and evaluation; a series of webinars; an online toolkit; and news aggregation from the sector.

The project aims to support the integration of climate change and air pollution at the city level through capacity building. It contains four consequential activities:

1) Convene focus group discussions with city policymakers and experts (health, transport, infrastructure) for needs assessment regarding the knowledge and tools cities should obtain in integrating SLCP reductions into policies and practices;
2) Develop a training curriculum drawing from existing materials to support the integration of SLCP reduction into policies and practices for cities in Asia;
3) Work with 3 cities to integrate SLCPs reduction into relevant policies and practices;
4) Gather inputs to report on the CCAC DI indicators and associated data collection questionnaire/initiative reporting template.

Learnings will be well documented and shared in major regional events, such as the Beijing International Forum for Metropolitan Clean Air Actions, the Seoul Mayors Forum on Climate Change, and the ASEAN High-Level Seminar on Environmentally Sustainable Cities.

The goal of this project is to mainstream biodiversity, nature-based solutions and ecosystem management, seek recognition for these as cross-sectoral tasks and integrated them in subnational Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans and sector plans in three model city-regions. ICLEI launched the four-year INTERACT-Bio project in three Global South countries: Brazil, India and Tanzania. ICLEI is using a co-creation and co-production approach to implement the project activities. Through the project, city-regions will align their planning with their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which are required by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Through strengthened cooperation between the different levels of government, subnational action in support of the NBSAPs is promoted and enabled. Such collaborative approaches will ultimately support nations to accelerate biodiversity goals.

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.

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.

This workshop focused on exploring solutions, technology and applications on building a more resilient and water smart city by a series of indoor lectures, technical visits and group presentations. The target participants include government officials, executives, and research and development personnel responsible for the water management and technical implementation. Experts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, New Zealand, Australia and Netherlands shared their expertise with representatives from fifteen countries.

The objective of the IUC programme is to contribute to improve international urban policy diplomacy and increase decentralized cooperation on sustainable urban development and climate change through a focus on sustainable energy. In North America the focus of the project is 1) on peering North American cities with European one so that they can learn from each other on how to tackle their GHG emissions and 2) on providing technical support to GCOM members.

ICLEI enables cities to advance on the Kaohsiung Strategies for the Future of Urban Mobility, an implementation framework for the Shared Mobility Principles, a cooperation platform aiming to advance a new urban mobility paradigm, advising and motivating our Members along these strategies, and have endorsed the Shared Mobility Principles

The project includes intertwined technical analysis components. The specific tasks were: (1) develop an updated King County community-wide geographic-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory, including a “Contribution Analysis” quantifying key causes/drivers to recent historical trends in countywide GHGs, and (2) an analysis that builds on the inventory to quantify pathways to achieve County adopted GHG reduction targets through 2030. This methodology can be applied in any community across the globe.