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.

Through this project, ICLEI enables adoption, implementation and dissemination of the best practices adopted by various Indian cities and setting benchmarks of creating climate resilient and sustainable urban habitats.The Climate Smart Cities program integrates climate change considerations into the planning and implementation of projects of the Smart City Plans in the three cities of Bhubaneswar (Orissa), Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) and Kochi (Kerala). ICLEI is carrying out detailed assessment of Smart City plans of these cities to understand the baseline with reference to existing climate change measures and assess climate mitigation and adaptation potential of the smart city proposals. ICLEI is also contributing towards formulation of Government of India’s ‘Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework (CSCAF)’ and facilitating test run of this framework in the project cities and hand holding them to submit the indicators data on the CSCAF. The project will facilitate enhanced and effective roll-out of the smart city actions in the cities.

ICLEI and its local partner International Climate Development Institute (ICDI) deliver three training events that teach local stakeholders how to improve resilience mechanisms under the UNISDR frameworks; how to ensure the life quality in order to achieve Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) from social, environmental and financial perspectives, by implementing the “Disaster resilience scorecard for cities;” and how to enhance and introduce new technology in DRR and resilience to start new business models in the related industry. The trainings include lectures and facilitation of group presentations and discussions.

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.

In this action research project, ICLEI is providing support to four cities in developing collaboration mechanisms that advance climate resilient developmment, which can then be adapted to other contexts. The implementation of each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) via enhanced multi-level governance has been identified as an area of focus of this project. Through this project, ICLEI builds on the understanding of what enables collaboration mechanisms for climate resilient development, such as environments that allow for learning-by-doing and accumulation of knowledge that can be harnessed, local government officials who are engaged and passionate about building climate resilience, and cities where strong multi-sectoral partnerships exist. Building climate resilience is a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary issue, and therefore ICLEI promotes collaborative governance, which favours transdisciplinary collaborations that increase the depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise that can be drawn on when tackling complex issues such as climate resilience.

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 builds the capacity of local governments to adapt to climate change and increase their resilience through suite of solutions including planning tools, vulnerability and risk assessment resources, stakeholder consultation workshops and peer and partner networking opportunities.

The Adaptation Changemakers Project is training and building agents of change for climate adaptation in communicates across Canada. The Changemakers Project is harnessing many stakeholders and decision-makers (municipal, provincial, and federal governments, private sector specialists, industry associations, planners, health professionals) to identify local climate impacts and the actions that each can take to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts locally. Centered around building capacity to engage stakeholders, assess vulnerability and risk, and develop an implementation-ready local adaptation plan, the project will result in adaptation being integrated across both the municipality and wider community. With technical guidance from ICLEI and regional experts, participants are initiating their adaptation effort with local stakeholders, assessing their risks, and developing a local action plan.

Through the Together for Climate project, municipalities are helping to lead a collaborative co-developed planning exercise with key local groups including regional governments, First Nations, chambers of commerce, land developers, academics, and health professionals. ICLEI is building capacity on climate action by convening eight municipalities in a collaborative adaptation planning process. The process identifies, assesses, and plans for local impacts – with a focus on long-term implementation.

American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) program matches communities with earth and space scientists to lay strong, scientifically based foundations for climate action and adaptation planning. ICLEI partnered with TEX for a facilitated workshop with scientists and 12 communities, including ICLEI members Reno and Missoula. In 2017, ICLEI worked with members Antioch, East Lansing, and Savannah as part of the Resilience Dialogues, a public-private collaboration to connect communities with the most appropriate resources. ICLEI acted as a community network lead to help scientists, experts and city staff deliver a set of resiliency questions and connect threats to resource.