American Geophysical Union’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) program matches communities with earth and space scientists to lay strong, scientifically based foundations for climate action and adaptation planning. ICLEI partnered with TEX for a facilitated workshop with scientists and 12 communities, including ICLEI members Reno and Missoula. In 2017, ICLEI worked with members Antioch, East Lansing, and Savannah as part of the Resilience Dialogues, a public-private collaboration to connect communities with the most appropriate resources. ICLEI acted as a community network lead to help scientists, experts and city staff deliver a set of resiliency questions and connect threats to resource.

ICLEI supports Fiji cities by providing streamlined processes for assessing their risks and challenges and developing achievable action plans. It works side-by-side with the cities and assists them to find partners for action. ICLEI has recently assisted 7 city and town councils to undertake disaster risk self assessment and action planning, using the Sendai Framework and scorecards, and built capacity for disaster risk reduction at 2-day workshops with these cities. City staff and elected councilors now hav an understanding of how disasters and climate change impact all the city development challenges. The outcomes of the DRR workshops have been collated into a “Generic Fiji Local Government DRR Action Plan” and provided to the Ministry Local Government and the National Disaster Management Office as input for their current reviews of the Local Government Act and National Disaster Management Plan.

ICLEI, through the AfriAlliance project, aims to support existing networks in identifying and sharing social innovations and technological solutions for key water and climate challenges. Capitalising on existing and emerging knowledge and innovation in Africa and the EU, ICLEI supports this process by contributing to the development of a social innovation database for water and climate solutions covering the following aspects: governance, capacity development, business development and technology. ICLEI also contributes to the development of project outputs such as policy briefs, social innovation factsheets, roadshows and innovation bridge events, as well as MOOCs. We also work on communication and visibility of the project, and building relationships between partners and their networks, raising awareness of the water related challenges, and opportunities related to climate change impacts with proposed adaptation measures.

Established in 2010, CDKN is a demand-led network that helps developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean to achieve climate compatible development goals. Through this project, CDKN is shifting from knowledge generating and technical assistance to knowledge brokering. It endeavours to get the right information to the right people and create an enabling environment for implementation and scaling climate and development actions in order to drive inclusive, sustainable and climate resilient development, and enhance the quality of life for the poorest and most vulnerable to climate change. ICLEI’s role is to facilitate knowledge brokering through making information and learning on climate compatible development easier to access and use for the Asia region.

While many island urban settlements are growing rapidly, climate change and increasingly frequent disasters are stressing urban systems. ICLEI promotes sustainable island and urban development through resilience and systems planning, clean energy, coastal fisheries management, infrastructure, innovative finance, ecosystems services, post disaster recovery and sustainable tourism. ICLEI collaborates with Mayors and leaders, through twinning of island cities with other cities and regions, to create fruitful partnerships to deliver scalable solutions to build resilience on islands and globally.

This workshop focused on exploring solutions, technology and applications on building a more resilient and water smart city by a series of indoor lectures, technical visits and group presentations. The target participants include government officials, executives, and research and development personnel responsible for the water management and technical implementation. Experts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, New Zealand, Australia and Netherlands shared their expertise with representatives from fifteen countries.

ICLEI initiated and continues to promote the uptake of the Basque Declaration, which was adopted by the participants of the 8th European Conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns in April 2016. The Basque Declaration outlines new pathways for European Cities and Towns to create productive, sustainable and resilient cities for a livable and inclusive Europe. The declaration aims to support and accelerate socio-cultural, socio-economic and technological transformation.

Through the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project, local governments in sub-Saharan Africa adopt a model of inclusive climate research and action, effectively bridging the divide between science and policy by responding to city identified challenges with the co-development of relevant climate information. The targeted Southern African local governments participate in city consultations – called Learning Labs – to facilitate knowledge sharing and generation, learning, networking and policy advice. The cities are also exposed to training (at political and technical levels), partnership development and co-production of robust and scale relevant climate information. FRACTAL has established new methodologies for improved collaboration and innovative transdisciplinary research by integrating across disciplines, nations, sectors, and between academia and society. This collaboration is rooted in Africa through effective partnerships between individuals and organisations, and between participants in Africa and elsewhere. This new approach to fundamental climate research is strongly framed by the information needs required for context relevant African societal decisions.

ICLEI is in charge of making a review on barriers and opportunities for the development of bio-based value chains; identifying stakeholders and expected benefits from mutual learning; mapping bio-based products (applications) based on stakeholders’ interests; creating guidelines for the BIOVoices Mobilisation and Mutual Learning approach; engaging the plurality of voices through creation of the BIOVOICES community and establishing a mechanism for communication of their needs, through the methodological approach for Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops; creating the on line BIOVoices social platform and on line mutual learning activities; co-designing of the BIOVoices social platform and organising a series of European, National and Regional MML co-creation events. All of these actions will promote the dialogue among civil society, business, policy makers and researchers as well as develop a common understanding of the different needs and possible solutions and produce policy briefs in order to increase the societal confidence related to bio-based products and industries.

The EcoProcura conference series is where public procurement policy meets practice, and where future innovations originate. For 20 years EcoProcura conferences promote exchange and dialogue amongst purchasers from all levels of governments, suppliers, policy-makers and multipliers on strategies and the latest practical solutions on SPP every 3-4 years. The purpose of the EcoProcura is to provide a forum to encourage public authorities (with a focus on local governments) and their partners, such as businesses, to exchange experiences and coordinate their actions and purchasing power in favour of sustainable and innovative products and services.