Our Activities

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'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.

The main role for ICLEI in this project is leading the communication and dissemination tasks. ICLEI has developed and is implementing and monitoring a detailed strategy form communication, dissemination and exploitation in order to support ongoing and extensive knowledge transfer aimed at increasing cycling solutions. That includes the development of the communication basis (communication strategy, digital and social media channels, communication materials) develop products and its dissemination, participation and organisation of events (workshops and meetings).
Moreover, ICLEI is in charge of writing the methodology and practical guidance for an effective transfer and transition strategy, including the use of transition management. Following the document, ICLEI developed an online exchange hub, that serves as an online collaborative platform supporting and facilitating the work of the cities involved in the project through a private, tailored working space.
Alining with the guidance, ICLEI leads the management of effective transition and change task. It is a core task of the project, and it involves capacity building and sustainable transfer of innovative cycling solutions.

A group of students from Northeastern University has been studying Fortaleza’s current Climate Action Plan, its actions and goals, and how far they have advanced. They have also been studying American projects, policies and initiatives, in order to be able to explore how policies, technologies, and cultural differences in various countries have helped grow and implement sustainable efforts and to make comparisons between sustainable energy technologies and policies in US and Brazil, and Boston and Fortaleza. The Lab’s products will be a written proposal and a one page executive summary to the mayor summarizing suggestions and appointments, and an oral presentation.

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.

The project includes intertwined technical analysis components. The specific tasks were: (1) develop an updated King County community-wide geographic-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory, including a “Contribution Analysis” quantifying key causes/drivers to recent historical trends in countywide GHGs, and (2) an analysis that builds on the inventory to quantify pathways to achieve County adopted GHG reduction targets through 2030. This methodology can be applied in any community across the globe.

ICLEI KO is connecting this national & local event with global issues and trends. KO helps the co-organizer and hosting city see and know what front-running country and cities are doing at similar events and efforts. SDGs Studio that was introduced in the Global SDGs Festival took place in Bonn in May 2019 was replicated at KFSD. KO’s role is bringing new ideas and innovation from global society to this festival that has been long-lasting since 1999.

Over a period of nine months, ICLEI led a cohort of communities through modules and one on one technical support to improve local government operations. Modules included an introduction to GHG inventory protocols for local government operations, sustainable public procurement, fleet management, building energy retrofits, and employee engagement. As with all ICLEI USA cohort learn / do programs, the participants selected a project they wished to complete as a part of the cohort. Most completed a municipal GHG inventory, one a fleet transition to EV plan, and one a plan to install combined heat and power (CHP) at a municipal water facility.

ICLEI supports the island cities by providing streamlined processes for assessing their risks and challenges and developing achievable action plans. It works side-by-side with the cities and assists them to find partners for action. ICLEI has been working with Honiara since 2016 to assist the City to undertake a disaster risk self assessment and action, using the Sendai Framework and scorecards, building capacity and supporting city leaders and staff to attend international events for peer-to-peer exchange and learning. There is now a strong understanding of disaster risk reduction among City staff and elected councilors, and an understanding of how disasters and climate change impact all the city development challenges. The ongoing project has led to strong partnerships between ICLEI, UNISDR, UN Habitat and academic professionals and institutions.

The PROMISE Tool has helped strengthen capacity of local government for integrated, participatory, inclusive and sustainable development and efficient resource mobilisation and utilisation to enhance service delivery, increase community participation and promote diversity in the urban system. Local authorities have been supported to create, enable and institutionalize equitable and inclusive governance mechanism and facilitate the development of smart and sustainable growth in cities through the project. Cities identified the projects that are most desirable and needed by the community. Local governments have recognized the need and importance of citizen engagement.

Through the Reflecting Cities project, ICLEI aims to provide African cities with spaces for reflection to assist them in engaging with the complex urban planning challenges they have identified. The project facilitates a number of exchanges to support urban planners (including representatives from national and local governments) in learning from the experiences of other cities, supported by experts. The project cities have each identified a case study of a complex planning topic with which they are currently wrestling The topics being explored include waste management, greening and traffic management. Based on the technical skills required for each case study, the project provides opportunities to engage with and learn from experts in relevant fields while benefiting from inter-city learning.

ICLEI provides detailed guidance and practice-oriented resources to technical staff through an open access, online, low emission development platform. 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. The platform contains sectoral and cross-sectoral packages of activities, structured along 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 of the respective field.

SOLUTIONSplus is coordinated by the Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI) and joined by 45 worldwide partners. The project aims to enable transformational change towards sustainable urban mobility through innovative and integrated electric mobility solutions.

Project cities will be able to demonstrate different types of innovative and integrated e-mobility solutions, complemented by a comprehensive toolbox, capacity development and replication activities. SOLUTIONSplus works closely with the UN Environment and the International Energy Agency (IEA) on a joint global urban e-mobility program that will significantly boost replication and impact of this innovation action.

In this H2020 project, ICLEI is involved in the following tasks:
1. Desktop research in order to understand mobility cultures and mobility styles.
This has been done by doing qualitative desktop research, examining empirical evidence focusing on Eastern European countries to understand the car sharing diffusion in these countries.
ICLEI focused on understanding how new mobility car sharing cultures could emerge in a context where the penetration of cush services is not very high (Eastern European countries)
2. ICLEI is involved in developing a toolbox to help decision-makers integrate car sharing into SUMPs. This is an ongoing activity and the toolbox will be tested in February 2020.
3. ICLEI established a group of 7 Uptake cities that are following the project, understanding the STARS results and as a final result they will write 1-2 page document on how they would implement car sharing scheme in their city. ICLEI organised webinars and workshops.
4. Large role ICLEI has in organising two dissemination workshops.

Promoting the project and its results among multiple beneficiaries is an important goal of the project. ICLEI therefor develops, implements, and monitors a detailed strategy for communication, dissemination, and exploitation. ICLEI will thereby safeguard the implementation and replication of developed solutions beyond the project’s lifetime. ICLEI will further develop a typology of city types that recognises different contexts.