ICLEI provides a unique platform enabling local governments to exchange knowledge and good practice, consider emerging challenges and innovations and explore collaborative action towards seeking a paradigm shift for more sustainable, resilient and equitable urban water and sanitation practices in Africa. For this proect, ICLEI’s main aims are to promote knowledge exchange, build capacity, facilitate connections and empower advocacy.

Through the Biodiversity Forum in Ulsan, ICLEI aims to develop and facilitate local driven policy action and raise citizen participation by co-planning, organizing and summarizing results together. Every year, biodiversity activists and NGOs participate and share their problems and solutions on chosen local biodiversity issues. This local Biodiversity Foru is a self-driven biodiversity event that gives local governments and residents a unique experience of raising awareness around the linkage between biodiversity and sustainable development, and biodiversity activities around the country.

ICLEI’s main activities in the project include: Taking the lead in transferring and customizing NBS, Co-developing NBS replication roadmap for FE, Co-developing the Urban NBS Plan along with the funding and investment strategies for FE, Co-developing the NBS implementation plan and opportunity-based implementation in FE districts and Launching a CLEVER Exchange Programme by organizing webinars, workshops, study visits etc. to ensure knowledge transfer. ICLEI will also ensure strategic coordination of communication and dissemination activities and Organize dissemination and knowledge brokerage events. These efforts will help to (i) advance the knowledge base on NBS for inclusive urban regeneration, (ii) integrate NBS in urban regeneration and planning processes, and (iii) produce governance, business and financial models for NBS projects.

Water should be a priority in the EU policies due to its importance for the economy, environment, and quality of life of the European citizens. ICLEI has created an alliance with 25 cities to prepare a framework for European cities with the objective of achieving a more coherent and thus more effective representation and visibility for water at the EU level. ICLEI aims to achieve this by supporting the implementation of the European Union water policy and the SDGs through sustainable water management at local level.

Through CitiesWithNature (CWN), local and regional governments are able to enhance the potential of nature to provide essential ecosystem services and solutions for the overall health of human habitats and urban areas. Through this platform, cities can engage, connect, learn, share, act, and inspire each other in the way of biodiversity and urban nature. ICLEI enables its local and regional constituency to access and influence global biodiversity processes and provides a one-stop-shop, or “big tent” under which projects, initiatives, and programs aimed at enhancing nature can be celebrated, shared, and promoted. ICLEI develops strategic global partnerships and the ongoing and continuous development of the various components of the CWN platform. CWN is recognized by the SCBD as the official vehicle for local and subnational governments to report their commitments and ambitions for the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.

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.

ICLEI supports the sub-national governments’ initiative on achieving Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Aichi Prefecture called for a group of leading sub-national governments showing significant efforts for achieving the Aichi Targets. The initiative was established during CBD-COP13 in Cancun, Mexico in 2016 and joined by a significant number of sub-national governments. ICLEI supported its launch and is contributing to develop their joint activities toward COP14 and beyond.

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.

The project is developed and implemented in three major components: 1) Building evidence and enable the local uptake of public health tools; 2) City implementation of analyses of health benefits from SLCP mitigation strategies, as well as stakeholder engagement, using the local evidence of health benefits to support SLCP reduction measures at the local level and help overcome barriers for policy change; and 3) Communications targeting policymakers, and promoting health benefits from sector initiatives of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, as well as tools, experiences and lessons learned. ICLEI is leading on implementation, and supporting on evidence-builiding and communciations. This project addresses SLCPs on the urban level in one developing country pilot city to provide proof of concept.

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.