Local governments are key actors when it comes to tackling climate change. Reducing GHG emissions at the local level should be managed and monitored using well-structured mechanisms. In South Korea, the Korea Environment Corporation (KeCO) supports Korean Local governments to calculate their GHG inventories. It has developed a tool based on the IPCC 2016 Guidelines, and it provides technical capacity for developing local GHG inventories. At the global level ICLEI, WRI and C40 developed the Global Protocol for Community-scale GHG inventories (GPC), now embedded in the GCoM Data Standard. This is the recommended approach for all local governments. Yet not all tools used by local governments are aligned to this new global approach. By aligning KeCO’s tool with the GPC, local governments in Korea can benefit in terms of cost and time when reporting their inventory together with their reduction target and action plan – connecting tem to the global developments. ICLEI coordinates the alignment process and the application process to obtain for the KeCO GHG tool an official stamp of approval, confirming the tool is confrm to the GPC, as part of the WRI GHG Protocol. This will enable Korean local governments to report their GG inventoriues using the KeCo tool, thereby receiving confirmation that they are using the Gcom Data Standard of global reporting.

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF),The Global Platform for Sustainable Cities (GPSC) is a partnership and knowledge platform that promotes integrated solutions and cutting-edge support for cities seeking to improve their urban sustainability. ICLEI, together with WRI and C40, serve on the GPSC Resource Team. The Resource Team facilitates peer exchange and provides high-level technical assistance, capacity development and curated knowledge products to local and regional governments to advance sustainable, and integrated, urban development. The GPSC RT serves local and regional governments by implementing a needs assessment and offering peer exchange, delivering training and promotional events and webinars and creating new and curated knowledge products. By situating city-level implementation projects in a broad sustainability framework, ICLEI, as a member of the GPSC RT, offers a holistic approach to urban development.

ICLEI facilitated and trained two groups of municipalities and stakeholders: Training-the-Trainers and Collaborative Implementation Groups. The former worked with 18 communities across the Great Lakes watershed to better understand their local climate impacts and risks. The project helped municipalities convene local workshops to learn how to use climate change modelling data and identify local vulnerabilities, assess and prioritize their risks, and begin developing adaptation plans. The latter worked with 12 communities to move from planning to action on local resilience by identifying implementation ready adaptation initiatives, securing funding for the initiatives, documenting key lessons learned via a case-study series, and leveraging future activities to support the actual implementation of local initiatives.

ICLEI can help raise ambition and connect cities, towns, and regions who are seeking to solve the problems of climate change. The GreenClimateCities (GCC) Program offers cities a proven process methodology for walking step-by-step toward climate neutrality.The GCC program supports local communities on the front lines addressing the challenges and opportunities of urban growth, exploring the potential of green economy and green/blue infrastructure and pursuing a low emission and climate resilient development trajectory. The GCC methodology is a nine step process offering support on assessing climate risks and vulnerabilities and integrating low-to-no emissions development and climate adaptive development) into urban development policies, plans, and processes. It consists of a wide range of resources, tools and guidance notes to support local and regional governments to deliver ambitious local climate action.

Through the project, ICLEI will support 20 cities, with emission inventories, targets and guidelines for mitigation. It includes preparation of an inventory of GHG emissions and atmospheric pollutants; future emission scenarios for 5, 10, 20 and 40 years, with reduction targets; institutional implementation strategies and inventory review mechanisms; and training of RMC technicians in the GPC methodology to allow the initiative to be internally replicated in the inventory review processes.

ICLEI is the lead author, supported by groups of city and carbon accounting experts from various fields, in the development of industry standards for local government GHG emissions accounting in the US. The development of the U.S. Community Protocol, the Local Government Operations Protocol, and the Recycling and Composting Protocol positioned ICLEI as exclusive experts in local government carbon accounting. Recognizing this expertise, ICLEI was asked to contribute to the development of the Global Protocol for Community Scale GHG emissions (GPC) and is currently working on an update to the U.S. Community Protocol to better account for forestry and land use changes. ICLEI continues to provide technical guidance for the application of the protocols to cities and practitioners around the world.

Through GrowSmarter ICLEI worked to develop a comprehensive understanding and guide for the replication of smart and sustainable urban solutions. ICLEI also led the communications work of GrowSmarter and has shared the good examples provided by the project.
ICLEI’s work on the replication of smart solutions concluded with the report ‘ROAD TO REPLICATION – GUIDING CITIES ON SMART URBAN DEVELOPMENT’ for stakeholders interested in replicating different smart measures in the future. It provides insights about the importance of integrating Smart City strategies into the core of sustainable energy and climate action planning processes as well as sustainable urban developments. Some of the key aspects that could facilitate replication further include the definition of diverse and cross-sector governance structures that ensure smart technologies to serve as enablers for sustainable urban transformation. It is also important for cities to evaluate the replication potential of smart measures in their urban context, following systematic approaches and management cycles, which mainstream smart and sustainable action.
Other key aspects identified include amongst others the involvement of stakeholders in early stages of planning, the development of internal capacity building processes, the adoption of innovative ways to initiate projects, and the transparent communication to citizens about the goals and measures implemented.

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.

ICLEI East Asia has works with SHRDC to conduct annual training programs to support local officials from ICLEI Member and other cities in Asia in strengthening their efforts to achieve sustainable and low emission urban development.

In 2019, two training programs were organized – one solely dedicated to Chinese Cities who participated in the 2019 International Forum on Air Quality Improvement jointly organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and ICLEI. And the other one for Southeast Asian Cities via the Ambitious City Promises project. Each program was designed to focus on policies that can be applied per the participating cities’ local context, considering their general socio-economic development and cooperation with the private sector and citizens. Through the policy presentations, site visits and group discussions, the participants were able to gain the latest insight on climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy transition, transportation, waste management, and citizen-led governance.

As a take-away of the training, participants presented their drafted action plans, combining learnings from the week-long training and their daily tasks.

ICLEI created a facilitated multi-month training and capacity building program; the “Cohort” to build local government capacity in climate, resilience, forestry, and equity. Each cohort is theme-based and includes up to 20 participant local governments, some of whom are supported by university student externs. Cohort participants are supported by ICLEI USA technical advisors, the ICLEI USA online learning platform, recorded training content, and one-on-one support as needed. Topics have included the GHG net-zero building strategies, GHG inventories as a first step toward identifying a reduction target and priority strategies to reduce emissions; integrated climate action and resilience plans, and equitable community engagement. Cohort partners have included the Global Covenant of Mayors, Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute, Mountain Towns 2030, California Statewide Energy Efficiency Collaborative, the University of Northern Iowa, and the State of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.