ICLEI at the UN High-Level Week: Local Governments as the ‘Rescue Plan’ for the SDGs and climate

Each year in September, the heart of global diplomacy beats in New York City for the UN General Assembly meetings. This year, Heads of States are additionally expected to renew their commitments on sustainability and climate through the Sustainable Development Goals Summit (16 – 19 September) and the UN Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit (20 

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Enhancing local climate action: Moving toward greater and greener resilience 

This blog post was written by Dewi Sari and Kanak Gokarn with contributions from the Resilient Development and Sustainable Energy teams of ICLEI World Secretariat. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has brought renewed attention to the close connections between our natural environments, economies, and human well-being. While cities have been contending with the immediate health impacts 

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Tracking progress en route from Madrid to Glasgow

In a parallel universe, we would be gathered this week in Glasgow for COP26, but instead we are facing a global pandemic that has disrupted life as we know it around the world. In the face of this challenge, we are forced to reimagine and redesign a new and healthier future for communities around the 

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Daring Cities closing balances bold initiatives with challenges that lie ahead

Inspiring city initiatives in the fight against climate change have sprung up around the world, from the conversion of former landfill sites into wetlands in Buenos Aires, to Delhi closing its most polluting power plant, to Guangzhou electrifying its entire bus network. At the same time, questions linger over why cities like Lagos or Dakar 

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With goal of becoming world’s first climate resilient country, Dominica inspires cities to better prepare for extreme weather conditions

Three years ago, the Caribbean island of Dominica was battered by Hurricane Maria’s winds of up to 250 km. Now, the island nation has announced plans to become the world’s first climate resilient country by 2030.  In the wake of that announcement, Dominica spokesperson Francine Baron took time to expand on the drive behind her 

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Accelerating the Race to Zero carbon: Multiple paths leading to the same destination

From left to right: Shinjiro Koizumi, Minister of Environment of Japan; Minna Arve, Mayor of Turku, Finland; Ashok Sridharan, Mayor of Bonn, Germany, and ICLEI President. One of the toughest parts of fulfilling the Paris Agreement goals is understanding the path to success. What does it take to muster the political will and support to 

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Three stories for local governments to watch in 2020

As we kick off a new decade, environment takes center stage. For the first time, the top five global threats in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report are all environmental. Climate action failure and biodiversity loss make the top five both in terms of likelihood and level of impact.

How to declare a climate emergency

A new toolkit from the Global Covenant of Mayor for Climate and Energy (GCoM) and partners shared with cities in the run up to the Global Climate Action Summit this week in New York continues to drive momentum on the climate emergency movement. Why declare a climate emergency? Climate science, as well as increasing incidences 

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Want to step up climate action in your city? Invest in your staff

Although they pave the way for national and international financial support, sophisticated emissions inventories are often the domain of the richest and most powerful cities. In other words, strong inventories often come from those with the resources to hire staff or pay third-party consultants to prepare those inventories. This perpetuates a difficult cycle: national and 

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New report – Multilevel climate action: The path to 1.5 degrees

ICLEI just released Multilevel climate action: The path to 1.5 degrees, our 2018 analysis of data from the carbonn Climate Registry. This post captures the key findings. For more, read the full report here. — The IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C, released in October 2018, is unequivocal on a few key fronts: first, human activities 

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