The first stakeholder meeting for the City Climate Planner Accreditation Program – an initiative of the World Bank’s Urban Development and Resilience Unit, was held in Gwangju, South Korea, from 13-15 January 2014.  The 3-day meeting was aimed at discussing methodologies related to city-level GHG inventories, identifying effective personnel certification program, and mapping out the timetable. Emani Kumar, Executive Director, ICLEI South Asia and Maryke van Staden, Low Carbon Cities Program Manager,  ICLEI World Secretariat were present at the meeting with other 25 senior officials, researchers and consultants from UN agencies, think tanks and companies.

The goal of the City Climate Planner Accreditation Program is to certify personnel who work on city GHG inventory, low-carbon planning and climate risk assessment. Globally, there are 181 cities with emission inventories, 70 cities with some sorts of climate risk studies, and 30 cities with comprehensive climate plans. Given this landscape, establishing a global standard to ensure city GHG inventory, low-carbon planning and climate risk assessment more consistent and comparable seemed urgently important. 

The main objectives of the workshop were to obtain stakeholder input, discuss what a certification program would mean in practice, explore the benefits that cities and individuals might gain from this program, and establish a roadmap on how to take this idea forward.

The meeting ended with an agreement of an ambitious timeline: launch personnel certification on city GHG inventory by the end of 2014 and start climate plan certification by the end of 2015. The next step in this process will involve the development of a strategy paper examining demand and demand building strategies in greater details, as well as recommendations on a “roadmap” to guide work on this initiative over the next 1-2 years.