Our Activities

The Global Lead City Network on Sustainable Procurement is a group of cities committed to drive the transition to sustainable consumption and production by implementing sustainable and innovation procurement. Participating cities act as ambassadors of sustainable procurement to lead to a resource efficient, low carbon and socially responsible society. Their aim is to share and develop capabilities to implement sustainable purchasing practices, as well as to help develop a supportive political framework for implementation.

ICLEI coordinates the GCLN on Sustainable Public Procurement. Through defining quantified targets for their procurement processes, the GLCN members create political commitment to SPP. This allows them to implement ambitious SPP practices. After announcing quantifiable sustainable procurement related targets at COP23 in Bonn, ICLEI and the network will seek to expand its membership in different world regions, focusing on regional sustainable procurement leaders – in terms of achievements and/or ambition.

In order to increase effectiveness of the advocacy of local and regional governments at the global processes, ICLEI will improve internal strategic planning, networking, coordination and dissemination activities of the Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments and its relations to UN member states and decision making bodies UN bodies.

ICLEI USA GHG experts provided Google with a technical review of the city-level greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory data provided by the Google Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE). Staff provided a comparison to other data sources commonly used in local community-scale GHG inventories. This analysis will increase awareness and understanding for cities that wish to use EIE data in the development of GHG inventories.

ICLEI participated in the development of the current version of the GPC as part of a multi-institutional cooperation along with The World Bank; UN Habitat; WRI and C40 and promoted the use and application of this protocol through its programs and related projects. Currently ICLEI participates in the further iteration of the GPC along with C40 and WRI which will allow complete integration with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy – Common Reporting Framework.

This will allow vertical (Multi-level) and horizontal integration of data for reporting entities reducing the effort to report in several standards of frameworks.

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.

ICLEI operates the Helpdesk on behalf of the European Commission, with the goal of providing an easy entry point to GPP for all European public authorities to increase the uptake and professionalization of GPP. Part of the GPP Helpdesk service are the publication of monthly newsletters, answering Helpdesk queries, semi-annual educational webinars on a content management on the European Commission’s GPP website; and dissemination of GPP policy and practice towards the Member States and all other organizations that fall within the scope of the EU Public Procurement Directives.

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.

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan Training: ICLEI provided in-person training for Los Angeles City staff on Climate Action Planning. The training focused on the following topics:
•Climate equity and community driven processes;
•5 Milestone Process: Data Driven Planning;
•Inventory: what sectors are usually measured, what it can tell you, determining trends; emissions forecasting and emissions reduction planning;
•Vulnerability assessment: criteria to consider, sectors, ranking; ensuring relevance by including the correct stakeholders (e.g., community members); place-based, model-informed, expert-driven, transparent;
•Best practices in the process and structure; and
•Action monitoring and report.

ICLEI strongly has been involved in the tasks related to integration and translation to practice of lessons learnt, particularly with regards to the local government community.
ICLEI further supported project partners to identify the practical and operational policy needs of the key target end users from the macro (global), meso (EU and national), and micro (regional and local) scales, ensuring that such needs and expectations are mainstreamed to the debates and coordination activities held in the project.
And ICLEI helped to operationalise the policy findings emerged in the project by providing effective policy guidance and specific tools answering to the main policy challenges and opportunities identified by green.eu network at different geographical scales.

ICLEI's first role is in the innovation management task to ensure that the project is aligned with the development of the state of the art technologies and the market possibilities. In this task, alongside with the Innovation Manager, we monitor internal and external activities, market developments and European policy with respect to t e-mobility, that is relevant to the project.

The second main task is to coordinate the task that involves the Uptake Cities Group. We have established a group of 10 cities that have expressed their interest in the project. Each city will develop a roadmap on the construction, configuration and location of charging infrastructures designed to promote the use of electric or hybrid rechargeable vehicles, and for the integration of these roadmaps in their respective SUMPs. Study visits to 3 pilots sites and 5 webinars are envisaged for the cities involvement.

ICLEI has also a communication/dissemination role. Finally, we are organising a 150 participant conference in the final year of the project.

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.

One of the main scientific problems for understanding southern Africa’s climate is that different models give contradictory scenarios for climate trends over the next 5–40 years. Through a transdisciplinary learning approach and scientific research, ICLEI contributes to an improved understanding of climate processes, and regional and local climate trends that drive the southern African climate system’s natural variability and responses to change within that system. ICLEI addresses the challenge of providing accessible, timely, applicable and defensible climate information that is needed by decision-makers operating at the city regional scale.