Cities are growing and changing so fast that many authorities are struggling to cope. ICLEI’s aim is to boost sustainable urban development, through city-to-city International Urban Cooperation (IUC) on and foster sub-national actions under the Global Covenant of Mayors initiative. ICLEI supports regional innovation strategies and inter-regional cooperation for local and regional development.

When New York City announced intentions to divest city pension funds from fossil fuel reserve owners by 2022, the move positioned NYC at the center of the global divestment movement. Providing the first in-depth look at the steps NYC took to reach a divestment commitment, ICLEI’ s case study shows how the the largest municipal pension system in the United States has begun to divest billions of dollars from fossil fuels — and demonstrates to peer cities, large and small, that the principles and processes behind fossil fuel divestment are transferable to nearly any location where the will to divest exists.

Working with local and subnational governments, ICLEI develops and implements smart procurement programmes and city-to-city networks to strategically support these governmenta to build capacity and engage with stakeholders (both local and provincial government and private sector) to implement and embed sustainable procurement practices in Africa.

The project ‘Urban-Rural Assembly’ (URA) aims to build a better understanding of the urban-rural constellation and interdependencies that are emerging along China’s vast urbanisation corridors, and which can no longer be described through traditional binaries of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. The region Huangyan-Taizhou, part of the Chinese ‘prefectural-level city‘ Taizhou, will be examined as an exemplary case study and learning context: a rapidly urbanising region where diverse and seemingly contradictory transformation processes take place simultaneously in close proximity, producing multiple dimensions of urban-rural interrelations. URA combines leading partners in the field of sustainable urban and regional transformation in Germany and China. ICLEI supports the research project in creating an interface between the research partners and policy makers, both within the case region as well as nationally in China and internationally. Through the development of transferable strategic instruments, enabling tools and guidelines, the project seeks to foster knowledge dissemination and transfer across the coastal urbanisation corridor – contributing to the urgent need for creative approaches towards localisation and implementation of the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda in China and beyond.

The City-Business Collaboration Accelerator (CiBiX) is a platform to increase engagement and collaboration between cities and businesses on city-led urban sustainability challenges. Through CiBiX, ICLEI provides a neutral platform that enables local government to take an active role in presenting their challenges to relevant private sector experts. Together they are able to participate in an early-engagement workshop that helps the city to receive new contributions as well as identify potential solutions and partnerships which they can choose to further explore. For businesses, it provides a strong networking opportunity to connect with local governments and learn exactly what their needs are in a particular sector or challenge scenario. The CiBiX Platform encourages cities to frame their urban challenges with a private sector engagement perspective- helping them to take the first step towards exploring potential partnerships relevant for their needs. The first service is a short-form ideation and early engagement workshop to stimulate an open and transparent interactive dialogue between a lead city and well-matched private sector representatives with a sustainability challenge framing.

ICLEI provides capacity building to target cities in implementing low emission development strategies as well as mainstreaming science-based disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in local development processes.

The project utilizes the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) Process toolkit, the Global Protocol for Community-scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) in formulating the cities’ climate action and management plans, and USAID Clean Energy Emission Reduction (CLEER) Tool in assessing the cities’ vulnerabilities, risks, and emissions. Through these analyses, target cities will be able to mainstream climate change adaptation and mitigation principles in their local development plans.

ICLEI works with four Brazilian cities to develop an action plans to achieve emissions neutrality and climate resilience by 2050. This includes emissions inventories, scenario modeling, vulnerability analysis and adaptation actions, and the implementation of already consolidated tools, such as CIRIS (developed by C40).

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.

The African Capital Cities Sustainability Forum (ACCSF) draws together mayors and technical officers from the continent’s most prominent cities to provide a guiding light for how African cities must think about the future and lead sustainability efforts. It facilitates the exchange of knowledge and learning and provides a platform for exploring how to develop truly African solutions to African problems. The event marshals the collective power of capital cities to contribute to, and influence, the pan-African and global discourse on sustainability.

ICLEI, as the co-convener of the ACCSF, is responsible for the
content development and program design of the ACCSF. By hosting the annual event, which brings together mayors and city managers of African capital cities, ICLEI facilitates the exchange knowledge and information on potential interventions, opportunities and threats that influence the potential for economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection.

Through Ambitious City Promises, target local governments across Southeast Asia participate in in-country consultations to facilitate capacity building, policy advice and technology transfer support; develop new or improved comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventories; actively engage city residents and key local climate stakeholders; prepare concrete climate action plans – called City Promises – that include ambitious targets and integrate community pledges; initiate implementation of City Promises through pilot projects; report aggregated city plans, actions and achievements; and engage in learning and cooperation opportunities with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and other cities.

Through Ambitious City Promises, ICLEI aims to develop and deploy bottom-up models of climate action planning, establish lasting mechanisms for knowledge sharing, and contribute to local, national and global climate goals.

The Promise of Seoul, a comprehensive climate strategy adopted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government at the ICLEI World Congress in 2015, is at the heart of Ambitious City Promises. It provides a model of effective climate action at the community level, showing that cities can be both engines of growth and global leaders on climate action by establishing inclusive low emission urban economies.