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 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.

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.

Using empirical research, ICLEI is developing a framework and tools to assess changes in food-water-energy nexus, their related trade-offs and the building of innovative capabilities in cities for developing innovative solutions to the food, water and energy nexus and manage green and blue infrastructure at the urban level. ICLEI is supporting the development of frameworks and tools that guide urban governance on the food-water-energy nexus, delivering innovative solutions to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss, while advancing development goals from food security to job creation across cities worldwide. The project assesses the changes in trade-offs of food-water-energy nexus (FWEN) in green and blue infrastructure (GBI) and their association with spatial planning and governance in eight cities using empirical cases. This will provide a better understanding of the barriers that hinder innovative and integrated FWEN approaches using GBI at different scales; and look for the common features of diverse interventions.

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.

ICLEI is developing a Green City Action Plan for the city of Kota Kinabalu following a multi-stakeholder consultative process, as a part of the Asian Development Bank’s (ABD) development of Green City Action Plans in the BIMP-EAGA region (comprised of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and East Timor). The City of Kota Kinabalu is committing to inclusive, ambitious climate action, mainstreaming climate actions and strategies in to its development agenda to contribute in achieving regional and national climate goals. A greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory and climate vulnerability assessment was prepared through a series of face-to-face interactive workshops with representatives of all concerned departments and stakeholders. Priority sectors and solutions for low-carbon climate-resilient development in Kota Kinabalau was defined, addressing the scale of finance and viable implementation models.

The Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals Estimates (SEEG) is an initiative of the Climate Observatory that includes the production of annual estimates of GHG emissions in Brazil, analytical documents on the evolution of emissions and a web portal to provide simple and clear system methods and data. The SEEG methodology was published in the journal NATURE in 2018.ICLEI works on the estimation of GHG emissions related to the waste sector, in addition to providing data to subnational governments, so that they take ownership of the issue. Methodologies defined by the IPCC are applied. SEEG provides annual estimates and technical emission data for all Brazilian states.