The Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa supports Sub-Saharan African cities to tackle the interconnected challenges of climate change and access to sustainable energy. Started in 2015, CoM SSA is the African regional chapter of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM), the largest network of cities driving urban climate action.
CoM SSA provides broad-scale technical support to signatory cities through a Technical Helpdesk housed at ICLEI Africa, in Cape Town. At least 25 of these cities are provided with tailored technical support to develop and implement Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SEACAPs).
As the initiative matures, the focus moves from planning to implementation and more specifically on unlocking climate finance at the local level. Implementing partners facilitate dialogue with private sector and finance institutions, link signatory cities with relevant initiatives for funding, facilitate inter-government dialogue on climate finance and co-ordinate action between international commitments, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Establishing transdisciplinary foundations
– Facilitate, organize and conduct Urban-Regional Innovation Partnerships (URIPs) dialogues
Developing a novel nature based solutions assessment framework
– Engage stakeholders in Utrecht and Malmö in a multi-criteria method to determine stakeholder values.
– Extend the learning process to the other URIPs in a two-day workshop.
– Identify how current insights and existing methods and models can be combined, improved and further developed.
Enabling conditions for systemic integration
– Participate in the methodological workshop and co-design of the research protocol.
– Undertake the work on systemic integration at the EU level.
Realising the potential of NBS
– Launch the Nature4Cities platform
– Disseminate Nature4Cities through ICLEI member cities
– Support community events
– Draw on contacts with municipal government
– Undertake a scenario back-casting exercise with the URIPs and 15 ICLEI member cities
– Hold a 1.5 day workshop with the URIP members and participants at the ICLEI Resilient Cities congress
Creating trandisciplinary capcity & delivering NATURVATION
– Generate conference/journal papers

ICLEI coordinates the work on a comprehensive Outreach, Communication and Training Strategy for the ROBUST project. The strategy comprises training material for decision-makers in policy and the public sector. The specific objectives are:
To facilitate an effective communication and exchange with ROBUST’s principle target groups: 1) regional rural and urban policymakers, interest groups, and practitioners; 2) European and national policymakers, interest groups, and the general public; and 3) the research and scientific community.
To strengthen the communication and dissemination components of all WPs through common principles and a professional planning and implementation of all related activities.
To support all outreach, communication and dissemination through an interactive project website with Live Case Studies and a publication library.
To ensure a high quality of all project results and support related communications, as well as produce training modules for widespread dissemination and exploitation of ROBUST’s findings.

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan Training: ICLEI provided in-person training for Los Angeles City staff on Climate Action Planning. The training focused on the following topics:
•Climate equity and community driven processes;
•5 Milestone Process: Data Driven Planning;
•Inventory: what sectors are usually measured, what it can tell you, determining trends; emissions forecasting and emissions reduction planning;
•Vulnerability assessment: criteria to consider, sectors, ranking; ensuring relevance by including the correct stakeholders (e.g., community members); place-based, model-informed, expert-driven, transparent;
•Best practices in the process and structure; and
•Action monitoring and report.

ACCELERATE aims to strengthen sustainable consumption and production of energy-use patterns in Pasig and Parañaque by enhancing the implementation of the PGBC and improving Energy Efficiency & Conservation (EE&C) across the board by inspiring action from the private sector and local communities.
The project will address the gaps in knowledge, capacity, and awareness of the different stakeholders on building standards, benchmarking tools, energy audits, and implementing EE&C practices as part of their compliance to the PGBC, specifically.

ICLEI is conducting research to help identify drivers and challenges for cities to participate at market mechanisms in the international realm, and more specifically with the cooperative approaches being negotiated at COP 24 & 25. ICLEI together with Perspectives, a German consultancy, is therefore analyzing different CDM, TAP and NAMA projects as well as proposing different approaches for cities to participate with future mechanisms running under Article 6.2 and 6.4 of the PA.

In 2011 ICLEI Africa launched the inaugral Local Climate Solutions for Africa. It brings together key national, subnational, local government and private sector leaders from across Africa to discuss and explore collective solutions for addressing climate related challenges that threaten to derail sustainable development in Africa.

The 2020 theme “Financing for Change” will respond to the growing acknowledgement worldwide that to tackle climate change, city-scale finance must be mobilised. Local finance will give subnational actors access to the resources they need to harness the emission reduction potential in cities, and to respond effectively to climate change at the local level. Improved multi-level governance and increased finance flow to the local level will speed up implementation of current national and international climate change commitments.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDDR) has been promoting Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) as well as the ‘Making Cities Resilient’ Campaign (MCR) with the aim of strengthening the capacity of cities and local governments in DRR and the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Action.
ICLEI Africa was appointed to provide technical assistance to 50 local government from Sub-Saharan Africa to carry out self-assessments at the local level in order to support implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
Beneficiary cities were selected based on specific criteria including level of risks, demand and interest shown, involvement of other partners and the level of institutional capacity to assess and address disaster risks, as well as prior experience and participation in the making Cities Resilient Campaign and other factors. The project targeted issues related to the development and implementation of risk-informed local development plans, with direct relation to increased capacity to deal with the topic and monitoring for improved public services to communities.

ICLEI is an implementing partner in the LGCCSP4 through the development of training material and provision of capacity building. The methodology used in the implementation of the activity is three fold as follows:
-To inform the development of the capacity building workshops, training materials and in-depth technical assistance, ICLEI undertook a desktop research and reviewed relevant studies, papers, and projects undertaken in South Africa, Africa and globally, with a specific focus on local government climate action and climate finance.
-To foster a thorough understanding of climate/green finance principles for local government officials, ICLEI developed a training manual drawing on the key lessons and implications for climate and green finance in South Africa.
– Conducted highly interactive training to 200 municipal officials using a learning-by-doing approach and to provide a review of municipal project proposals to determine the best-suited types of funding and financing and the best type of funders.

As the frequency and intensity of climate change related disasters increase, local communities are severely impacted. In response to recent climate related disasters on the continent, ICLEI Africa is stepping up to support cities in reducing their disaster risk. We draw on two decades of on-the-ground work in Africa, building and strengthening resilience through proactive planning.