Our Activities

The way the world heats its buildings uses fossil fuel in an unsustainable way. By providing the methods, data, and tools to enable more sophisticated thermal energy system planning rapidly and cheaply, ICLEI accelerates the multi-government and stakeholder dialogues in Europe and beyond on decarbonizing heating and cooling in an integrated energy system.

ICLEI East Asia serves as the Secretariat of EACAC, providing a long-term cooperation platform for East Asian cities committed to tackling air pollution through city-to-city exchange and collaboration.
The main activities of EACAC include: 1) (co)organizing forums, workshops and study trips for capacity building; 2) facilitating participants' engagement; 3) compiling case studies on East Asian cities’ air quality management; and 4) mobilizing resources for future development of the program and its member cities.
Under EACAC, ICLEI East Asia has provided the seed funding of the research project “Green Lung” in Ulaanbaatar (2017-2019), which promotes urban greening as a means to improve air quality in the city. ICLEI East Asia has also supported the Beijing Bureau of Ecology and Environment in strengthening its capacity on international cooperation (2018-2019), and deliver a bilateral research between Beijing and Seoul (2019-), focusing on the comparison of the two cities’ policies on the replacement of outdated boilers, vehicle control, fugitive dust management and seasonal control measures.

ICLEI enables the mainstreaming of the prosumer phenomenon into the European Energy Union, supporting citizen participation, inclusiveness and transparency and most of all to contribute to a sustainable energy transition for Europe through decentralized approaches towards 2030 and 2050.

Recognizing that cities play an important role in leading the way to achieve carbon neutrality in the second half of this century, namely the goals of the Paris Agreement, ICLEI supports cities and regions laying out their vision on a sustainable society in 2050. The declaration lays out a vision for cities leading up to 2050 and encourages cities around the world to join Kyoto in cultivating a culture of sustainable cities that is in balance with the local and global environment.

Building upon ICLEI´s commitment to engage in the NDC Partnership and as the first associate member, ICLEI created a modular approach to addresses the vertical integration of NDC implementation and investment plans, outlining the contribution of local and regional governments in the NDCs. ICLEI’s participation is structured in four parts: coordinating a multilevel action working group (MAWG); knowledge products and tools; country engagement for developing Partnership Plans (PPs), working with countries wanting to join the NDCP; and project management and coordination with a range of partners.

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.

CITYFOOD accelerates local and regional government action on sustainable and resilient city-region food systems by combining networking with technical expertise through training and policy guidance and facilitating local and regional engagement in international discourse.

The network promotes food security, social inclusion, economic development and environmental resource management by combining networking with training, policy guidance and technical expertise on city-region food systems worldwide.

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, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and ICLEI are jointly implementing this project addressing integrated climate action in local governments and their cities. Using ICLEI’s GreenClimateCities process methodology, technical guidance and capacity development is 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.

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.