Our Activities

Since 2008, ICLEI’s Cities Biodiversity Center (CBC) has convened successive summits as official parallel events to the Conference on Biological Diversity COP, to enable local and subnational governments engagement. These Summits have resulted in strong political outcomes, including the Quintana Roo (2016) and Sharm El-Sheikh (2018) Communiques, Nagoya Plan of Action on Subnational Governments, Cities and Other Local Authorities for Biodiversity (2011 – 2020), adopted at COP 10 in 2010, and of many decisions on local and subnational governments. Through these outcomes, ICLEI CBC has shaped a global policy environment that supports local and regional governments in their efforts to scale up and mainstream nature in sustainable urban development worldwide. ICLEI has also developed a dedicated website for local and subnational governments to advance the Action Agenda for Nature and People and the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework and holds monthly informational webinars. The CBC supports the work of CitiesWithNature.

District Energy Systems produce steam, hot water or chilled water at a central plant, making them much more efficient and less energy consuming. Under this project ICLEI assesses potential for district energy systems in Indian cities with an aim to develop integrated roadmaps for energy policy and investment for scale-up of district cooling in specific cities. ICLEI’s objective is to assist Indian cities to accelerate their transition to low-carbon and climate resilient societies through modern district energy system.

Over 300 Canadian municipalities are making a public commitment to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and to act on climate change. Through the development and application of accounting and planning tools, knowledge development resources, training workshops and peer-networks, ICLEI builds the capacity of local governments across Canada to mitigation climate change.

In nearly three decades of work, ICLEI has developed, tested and scaled up methodologies to guide the way towards sustainable urban development at the local level. This rich experience accumulated allows us to apply a common framework for our global projects and initiatives, which currently follows the stages: analysis, action and acceleration, and in each one follows a step-by-step guideline. This track can be applied to a variety of themes – from low emission to nature-based development – and promotes a cyclical path that allows the continuous improvement of the governments in our Network. This year’s “Cities + Sustainable – ICLEI South America Solutions Portfolio” highlights the following opportunities and initiatives ICLEI provides cities and regions in South America.

ICLEI supports the leading national sustainable cities initiative in Japan. The initiative started as Environmental Model City Initiative in 2008, evolved into FutureCIty Initiative in 2011, and matured as SDGs FutureCity Initiative in 2018. ICLEI and member cities have been actively involved in the Initiative from the beginning; and recently contributed to The 7th International Forum focused on the localization of SDGs.

Through this partnership with the non-profit organization R20, ICLEI promotes and implements projects designed to produce local economic and environmental benefits in the form of reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, strong local economies, improved public health and new green jobs. ICLEI identifies medium to large scale climate and energy projects such as waste-to-energy, smart street lighting and other low carbon solutions looking to further develop these projects into bankable joint venture initiatives with private sector financiers in Sub Saharan Africa.

Non-energy-related benefits play a key role in the deep renovation of existing buildings. ICLEI focuses on the creation of a substantial increase of the real estate value of the existing buildings through a significant energy and architectural transformation like aside or façade addictions, rooftop extensions or even an entire new building construction, to reach the goal of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings and extreme renovation.

In the last 30 years, climate change, coupled with unplanned, rapid urbanization, generated significant development challenges worldwide. ICLEI has implemented City Learning Labs FRACTAL to periodically gather a broad range of knowledge-holders and decision-makers in targeted cities to work together on developing a deep, shared understanding of critical burning issues linked to climate that cities face.

ICLEI offers a simple and convenient online process for pre-screened installers to compete for city-region bids, making it easier for North American communities to switch to solar energy.

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.