The Ambitious City Promises project, led by ICLEI is designed to advance this work by capacitating local governments, engaging citizens and driving climate action through Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS).

The Promise of Seoul, a comprehensive climate strategy adopted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government at the ICLEI World Congress in 2015, is at the heart of Ambitious City Promises. It provides a model of effective climate action at the community level, showing that cities can be both engines of growth and global leaders on climate action by establishing inclusive low emission urban economies. Through Ambitious City Promises, local governments in Southeast Asia adapt this model of inclusive, ambitious climate action, mainstreaming low emission development strategies and creating new climate leaders.

The ICLEI East Asia Secretariat acted as one of the implementing partners of the project.

Find out more about the Ambitious City Promises project 

The Asia Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS) Partnership (ALP) is a voluntary regional network comprised of organizations and individuals from the public, private, and non-governmental sectors active in designing, promoting, and/or implementing LEDS in the region. Under the Partnership, ICLEI supports and promotes regional cooperation and collaboration and facilitates learning across member organizations and Asian countries by

• assisting Asian countries to advance LEDS, green growth strategy, and achieve NDC targets;
• offering peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and learning through online sessions and in-person regional peer learning and training workshops;
• providing access to resource materials such as issue briefs, case stories, decision tools, and training materials that enable practitioners in the region to champion LEDS; and
• providing technical assistance to address needs and advance LEDS and NDC implementation.

Find out more at asialeds.org

Hosted by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment (BEE), the Beijing International Forum for Metropolitan Clean Air and Climate Actions has been an annual professional forum in the field of ecological environment since 2017. ICLEI East Asia has been recognized as a co-host of the Forum since 2019, providing support to their planning and preparation.

• 2019 Forum
• 2020 Forum
• 2021 Forum (CH)

ICLEI is the local lead partner of the Building Efficiency Accelerator (BEA) in East Asia, taking responsibility to plan and execute the work plan, coordinating participating cities and stakeholders, and facilitating the engagement among business and local governments in the region.

Through the BEA, ICLEI has supported local governments in China and Mongolia to inquire about practical information for policy design and planning, to have access to international funding opportunities for project implementation and replication, and to strengthen the relationship with non-governmental stakeholders.

Find out more about the BEA

Consistent reporting and tracking of climate action are critical to meeting local, regional, national and global climate targets. However, tracking systems, where they exist, are rarely integrated. This sort of parallel tracking makes it difficult to get a clear picture of climate action above the local level, as a way to inform more targeted policy and action.

Local and regional governments can report their climate data through the ICLEI and CDP unified reporting system to monitor climate mitigation and adaptation commitments, plans, actions, and performance.

The carbonn® Center supports cities, towns, and regions by developing robust reporting practices that enhance transparency, accountability and credibility, encouraging measurable, reportable and verifiable (MRV) local climate action.

Find out more at carbonn.org 

The overarching goal of the “CitiesSHIFT: Capacity building and networking for climate- and people-friendly mobility” project was to support cities to identify challenges and opportunities of urban mobility system in the hope that the city could shift towards more ecomobile modes of travel, i.e., walking, cycling, shared and public transport.

The two-year project (2018 to 2020) was funded by the Hewlett Foundation and the EcoMobility Alliance. The final project report demonstrates how the EcoMobility SHIFT+ tool can be adopted to assess and measure the transportation system of six cities in China, India, and Uganda.

Find out more at Sustainable Mobility at ICLEI

CitiesWithNature is a partnership initiative between ICLEI, IUCN, TNC, WWF, the United Nations Environment Programme, and many other organizations that provides an innovative online platform to support the co-evolution of cities with nature. It offers access to an extensive array of guides, tools, and case studies to help cities and city regions redefine their relationship with nature. This interactive platform is recognized by the SCBD as the official vehicle for local and subnational governments to report their reports and ambitions for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

Find out more at citieswithnature.org

CityFood is a flagship program of ICLEI that aims to accelerate local and regional government action toward sustainable food systems transformation. It spans a number of projects and initiatives across all of ICLEI’s Regional Offices and brings together local and regional governments as well as critical global and regional partners. Our clear mandate is leveraging the power of food for resilient futures.

In order to take accurate actions against climate change, it is fundamental to know the exact data. ICLEI USA developed and maintains an online suite of emissions management tools packaged together in an application known as ClearPath. The software is based on the Greenhouse Gas emissions protocols and allows cities to calculate, forecast, plan, and monitor emissions under all community and local government operations protocols.

Find out more at ClearPath

The Horizon2020 funded project CLEVER Cities uses nature-based solutions (NbS) to address urban challenges and promote social inclusion in cities across Europe, South America, and China.

ICLEI’s main activities in the project include: taking the lead in transferring and customizing NbS, co-developing NbS replication roadmaps, Co-developing the Urban NbS Plan along with the funding and investment strategies, Co-developing the NbS implementation plan and opportunity-based implementation, 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.

Find out more at clevercities.eu

The Horizon2020 funded project Connecting Nature is a consortium of 30 partners within 16 European countries, and hubs in Brazil, China, Korea, Georgia, and Armenia.

The project will expand upon existing urban sustainability and innovation initiatives, create a reference framework of clear and useful indicators for the implementation and evaluation of nature-based solutions, build expertise and competency in all cities for innovative urban planning, policy and solution implementation, generate economic opportunities for a diversity of urban actors in Europe, and nurture urban community support, idea creation, active stakeholder participation and idea implementation at local levels and expansion and replication at a global level, through the global reach of ICLEI.

Together with the ICLEI European Secretariat, the ICLEI Beijing Office worked in collaboration with local partners on drawing down matching regional funding and establishing local Connecting Nature linked initiatives.

Find out more at connectingnature.eu

The climate emergency is happening right now, in our cities, towns, and regions around the world. Our global leaders are struggling to address this urgent crisis. But the daring actions of local leaders are spreading around the globe.

Created by ICLEI and the Federal City of Bonn, Daring Cities is a virtual, action-oriented forum to recognize and empower courageous urban leaders – including mayors and other decision-makers, technical staff, researchers, private sector representatives, and community organizers – to disrupt business-as-usual and shift towards business-as-possible. Daring Cities showcases and catalyzes exemplary local climate action to tackle the climate emergency, including ambitious resilience-building and climate mitigation efforts.

Find out more at daringcities.org