In a partnership with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, ICLEI East Asia is taking a proactive approach to empower Uzbek cities with low-carbon development strategies. This initiative focuses on capacity building and peer-to-peer learning to foster sustainable urban practices. It aims to actively establish a long-term cooperation platform, enhancing the climate resilience and economic vitality of participating cities through shared expertise and innovative practices.

The Solutions Gateway is an online resource platform for local and regional governments where they will be able to find relevant Low Emissions Development (LED) Solutions for their cities. It contains sectoral and cross-sectoral packages of activities, structured along with local government responsibilities and spheres of influence, to support cities in the development of low-emission strategies, plans, and projects.

The Solutions Gateway contents are based on proven technologies and practices, distilled into Solutions and Solution Packages which are drafted and peer-reviewed by experts in the respective field. The platform was developed under the Urban-LEDS project, funded by the European Union, and jointly implemented by ICLEI and UN-Habitat.

Find out more at solutions-gateway.org

Managed by the ICLEI European Secretariat, the Sustainable Procurement Platform provides up-to-date news, case studies, events, guidance, and more on sustainable procurement from across the world.

Find out more at sustainable-procurement.org

The Transformative Actions Program (TAP) provides a framework by connecting transformative local climate projects with project preparation facilities (PPFs) and tools that improve project bankability. Projects in the pipeline are screened based on their transformative impact which ensures their enduring potential.

ICLEI develops partnerships that connect the goals of diverse stakeholders into one coherent value chain for developing robust, transformative, and bankable projects that will accelerate low-to-no emission and climate-resilient development. ICLEI regional offices act as catalysts for mobilizing projects and as the first “filter” to identify priority projects.

Find out more at tap-potential.org

Since the 1992 Earth Summit, the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency has been the voice for networks of local and regional governments under the UNFCCC, representing them since the first Conference of Parties (COP) in 1995. The LGMA serves as the primary channel for these groups, coordinating their inputs and influencing global climate negotiations, and ICLEI has been serving as the LGMA’s focal point. Each year, LGMA supports the COP Presidencies and advance initiatives such as the transition from “Friends of Cities” to the broader “UNFCCC Friends of Multilevel Action” to ensure that local perspectives shape the decisions in UNFCCC processes. Also, ICLEI leads the organization of LGMA pavilion under each COP, serving as a global stage to highlight the challenges, achievements, and commitments of local and subnational actors in climate action. This inclusive platform united cities, towns, regions, and various stakeholders within the LGMA Constituency, fostering collaboration to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

From 2019 to 2021, ICLEi East Asia co-delivered a series of in-depth training to 4 selected cities/districts in China – namely Ningbo, Chengdu, Shanghai Changning, and Beijing – with UNDRR ONEA-GETI,  to strengthen their capacities on disaster risk reduction, as well as on designing and implementing urban resilience in the context of climate change.

Through the training, the participants were able to apply UNDRR’s Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient Scorecard and conduct preliminary assessments of the jurisdictions’ current status in disaster risk reduction and resilient development with the support of leading experts from multi-disciplinary backgrounds.

Relevant reports:

• Ningbo gears up to strengthen capacities for disaster risk reduction and resilient cities
• Chengdu accelerates resilience development to combat climate change
• Chinese cities exploring resilience approaches to navigate sustainable development

The Sino-German project “Urban-Rural Assembly” (URA) takes the urbanizing region of Huangyan-Taizhou in Zhejiang Province in China as a unique research and development environment aiming to

1. build an inter-disciplinary and multi-scalar understanding of trans-local interdependencies and metabolism at the urban-rural interface;
2. develop and implement community-driven pilot interventions enhancing resource efficiency and reinforcing regional circular economies; and
3. develop and demonstrate new multi-level, multi-actor governance tools that enable local municipalities to manage urban-rural linkages towards a progressive urban-regional model that builds on socio-ecologically inclusive and cooperative development approaches.

ICLEI supports the research project in creating an interface between the research partners and policymakers, both within the case region as well as nationally in China and internationally.

Find out more at urbanruralassembly.com

The Urban Transitions Alliance connects industrial legacy cities from Europe, USA and China committed to accelerating ambitious and inclusive transitions, as well as showcasing their sustainability leadership. Alliance cities share their own transition experiences, knowledge, and good practices based on social, economic, and environmental challenges within their unique industrial legacy context. Through a tailored exchange platform hosted by ICLEI, the Alliance helps cities to identify and leverage expertise to co-create implementation strategies for sustainability-related projects.

Find out more about the Urban Transitions Alliance

Human activities contribute a significant and growing proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the increased demand for energy and other services in urban areas – also driven by rapid population growth – exacerbating the climate challenge. There is an urgent need for actions that will substantially contribute to the Paris Agreements’ climate targets, to stay well below 1.5 Degrees Celsius.

Under the Urban-LEDS Phase II project funded by the European Commission, UN-Habitat and ICLEI are jointly implementing this project to address integrated climate action in local governments and their cities. Using ICLEI’s GreenClimateCities process methodology, technical guidance and capacity development are provided to selected local governments, also mobilizing cities to commit to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), exploring access to financing and supporting multilevel governance to enable effective action.

Find out more at urban-leds.org

UrbanByNature is a facilitated capacity-building program promoting exchange among cities, researchers, SMEs, and NGOs to build bridges with the Nature-Based Solutions communities across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and other regions that are interested. The program is powered by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and the EU-funded projects Connecting Nature and CLEVER Cities.

UrbanByNature has been launched in five regional hubs worldwide: Brazil, Korea, the Caucasus, China, and Spain. Participation is open and free of charge with new opportunities coming up regularly for other regions worldwide.

A six-part webinar series for China was delivered from June 2021 through February 2022 by the ICLEI European Secretariat and the ICLEI Beijing Office:

• #1 Recap: Introducing NbS and the UrbanByNature Programme in China
• #2 Recap: Enabling Conditions and Barriers to implementing NbS
• #3 Recap: Planning NbS with Citizens and Other Stakeholders
• #4 Recap: Technical Implementation of NbS
• #5 Recap: Monitoring and Evaluation of NbS
• #6 Recap: Replicating NbS across the Urban Fabric