Our Activities

ICLEI USA provided technical advisory services at the request of the Climate Smart citizen task force of Philipstown New York. ICLEI contributed to the development of a baseline estimate for "net" GHG emissions after removals. The object of the analysis was to inform the development of a Climate Action Plan to outline the policies and actions local government, community partners, and individuals could take to measurably reduce emissions and adapt to unavoidable climate change. The task force recommended that the Town adopt the analysis given that it best localizes the global emissions resulting from the community’s actions and unites efforts to promote community health, a growing local economy, environmental stewardship and other sustainability initiatives under the common banner of a collective plan to address climate change. The town set a goal of carbon neutrality by 2040 and explored opportunities to do that with and without the purchase of carbon offsets.

ICLEI USA partnered with Azavea, a beneficial corporation and software developer in Philadelphia and Dr. Missy Stultz, a former ICLEI USA staff member to create TEMPERATE to help local governments with limited resources to develop climate change adaptation plans and align those plans with the reporting requirements of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. The Temperate dashboard displays city-specific potential future climate hazards, based on the geographic regions and findings included in the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Each Top Hazard is backed by one of the Climate indicators available in the Azavea Climate API, informed by Dr. Stultz's research. ICLEI USA provides 2-6 hours of Temperate support to its members. ICLEI USA contracts with cities that wish to outsource the Vulnerability Assessment development, as was the case with the Town and Village of New Paltz New York. Over a two-year period, ICLEI USA staff worked with the Town and stakeholders to develop an action plan to address local climate vulnerabilities.

Within the project, ICLEI Europe was rersponsible for:
– a preliminary meta study on the multitude of campaigns and networks of the urban, peri-urban and rural endeavours for sustainability and climate change on the European level;
– managing and co-ordinating large cross-case studies in the European regions
– analysing the field research data and merging it with data on European regions

ICLEI was the dissemination and communication partner in the EnerLOG consortium. Main task was the design of a knowledge transfer strategy and its implementation.
The transfer strategy consisted of various workshops, one large transfer conference and numerous publications aimed at a variety of audiences.
Additionally an online training module was created and uploaded on the Covenant capaCITY training platform.

With the main topic 'Urban Sustainability' the ETC-ULS Action plan 2020 forsees the following tasks for ICLEI:
Support for the finalisation and publication of a study
Supporting integrated urban sustainability management:
– Finalisation of the publication of Urban SDG indicatiors
– Distilling good practice examples that illustrate innovative governance approaches of cities and urban areas to implement the SDGs.
Stakeholder meeting.

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 was responsible for the integration of five “reference cities” invited to take part in the Berliner Mobilitätskonferenz (Berlin Mobility Conference): Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Moscow and Paris.
ICLEI identified suitable projects/initiatives from each of the five cities that could fit well into the envisaged conference programme. Further ICLEI led the communication with these cities in the run-up to the event to confirm their participation, brief them, and ensure a high-quality, relevant presentation is delivered at the conference.

Through GrowSmarter ICLEI worked to develop a comprehensive understanding and guide for the replication of smart and sustainable urban solutions. ICLEI also led the communications work of GrowSmarter and has shared the good examples provided by the project.
ICLEI’s work on the replication of smart solutions concluded with the report ‘ROAD TO REPLICATION – GUIDING CITIES ON SMART URBAN DEVELOPMENT’ for stakeholders interested in replicating different smart measures in the future. It provides insights about the importance of integrating Smart City strategies into the core of sustainable energy and climate action planning processes as well as sustainable urban developments. Some of the key aspects that could facilitate replication further include the definition of diverse and cross-sector governance structures that ensure smart technologies to serve as enablers for sustainable urban transformation. It is also important for cities to evaluate the replication potential of smart measures in their urban context, following systematic approaches and management cycles, which mainstream smart and sustainable action.
Other key aspects identified include amongst others the involvement of stakeholders in early stages of planning, the development of internal capacity building processes, the adoption of innovative ways to initiate projects, and the transparent communication to citizens about the goals and measures implemented.

ICLEI supports the communications effort of the EIP-SCC Marketplace and will seek to ensure the inclusion of cities and others to strengthen the ‚explore-shape-deal‘ approach of the matchmaking. ICLEI supports the matchmaking events and brings in its sustainable procurement expertise. In particular ICLEI will ensure the EIP SCC Marketplace engages with other European initiatives and experts for input and dissemination. ICLEI also is the expert of the action cluster on Sustainable Urban Mobility.

ICLEI's aim in the project is to maximise consumers’ and specifically procurers involvement via specific campaigns, via retailers, cities and manufacturers’ service network. ICLEI is creating awareness amongst European public and business procurement personnel (PPP) through targeted and tailormade campaigns to inform public procurement actors and their organisations. The consortium wants to empower PPP to make better, more informed decisions when it comes to the procurement of high energy efficiency products.