The project ‘Urban-Rural Assembly’ (URA) aims to build a better understanding of the urban-rural constellation and interdependencies that are emerging along China’s vast urbanisation corridors, and which can no longer be described through traditional binaries of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. The region Huangyan-Taizhou, part of the Chinese ‘prefectural-level city‘ Taizhou, will be examined as an exemplary case study and learning context: a rapidly urbanising region where diverse and seemingly contradictory transformation processes take place simultaneously in close proximity, producing multiple dimensions of urban-rural interrelations. URA combines leading partners in the field of sustainable urban and regional transformation in Germany and China. ICLEI supports the research project in creating an interface between the research partners and policy makers, both within the case region as well as nationally in China and internationally. Through the development of transferable strategic instruments, enabling tools and guidelines, the project seeks to foster knowledge dissemination and transfer across the coastal urbanisation corridor – contributing to the urgent need for creative approaches towards localisation and implementation of the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda in China and beyond.

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.

Human activities contribute a significant and growing proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the increased demand for energy and other services in urban areas – also driven by rapid population growth – exacerbating the climate challenge. There is an urgent need for actions that will substantially contribute to the Paris Agreements climate targets, to stay well below 1.5 Degrees Celsius.

Under the Urban-LEDS Phase II project funded by the European Commission, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and ICLEI are jointly implementing this project addressing integrated climate action in local governments and their cities. Using ICLEI’s GreenClimateCities process methodology, technical guidance and capacity development is provided to selected local governments, also mobilizing cities to commit to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), exploring access to financing and supporting multilevel governance to enable effective action.

ICLEI Europe is lead of the project and thus coordinates it. ICLEI Europe is also responsible for the distilling solutions. This includes following aspects:
To distill a final palette of innovative specific recommendations for sustainable and inclusive urban areas from the outputs of WPs 3-5, including policy decisions, urban planning tools, financing mechanisms, and procedural practices with a variety of city-makers, including historically marginalized groups and stakeholders in the city.
To distill policy- and practice-relevant recommendations for target audiences at multiple governance levels and targeting specific policy frameworks (e.g. EU Urban Agenda, SDGs, etc.)
To disseminate innovative solutions and recommendations in multiple formats to UrbanA’s target audiences and beyond using strategic partners’ communication channels

ICLEI provides awareness raising and capacity building to all spheres of government in mainstreaming biodiversity, through guidance on vertical and horizontal integration to ensure successful implementation of biodiversity strategies and action plans (BSAPS); clarifies the role and contribution to be made at national, subnational and local level; and provide practical technical guidance to national, subnational and local governments in 13 areas of action to promote integration, coordination and cooperation in developing and implementing National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans under the Convention of Biological Diversity.

Working with local and subnational governments, ICLEI develops and implements smart procurement programmes and city-to-city networks to strategically support these governmenta to build capacity and engage with stakeholders (both local and provincial government and private sector) to implement and embed sustainable procurement practices in Africa.

ICLEI enhances the socially inclusive and environmentally sound market uptake of wind energy by increasing its social acceptance in ‘wind energy scarce regions’ (WESR). The specific objectives are screening, analysing, discussing, replicating, testing and disseminating feasible solutions for increasing social acceptance and thereby the uptake of wind energy.
ICLEI actively contributes to driving the transition to renewable energy sources in Europe forward.

This workshop will provide an overview of global trends in environmental disclosure and reporting in 2019 in light of the recent announcement of CDP and ICLEI’s joint unified reporting system. Workshop participants will gain expanded knowledge of global city climate policy and new trends in reporting and measuring environmental impact, an overview of CDP and ICLEI’s unified reporting system, and a comprehensive briefing on the technical changes and guidance on the current questionnaires.

ICLEI provides workshops that educate municipal governments on how to improve sustainable and resilient mechanisms under the UN frameworks, how to ensure the life quality in order to achieve sustainable development from social, environmental and financial perspectives, and how to enhance and introduce new technology in resilience to start a new business model in the related industry.

Within the project, ICLEI Europe was rersponsible for:
– a preliminary meta study on the multitude of campaigns and networks of the urban, peri-urban and rural endeavours for sustainability and climate change on the European level;
– managing and co-ordinating large cross-case studies in the European regions
– analysing the field research data and merging it with data on European regions