In the opening address of the Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships Supporting Ambitious Climate Action, Dr. Jürgen Zattler, Germany’s Director General, Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development, reflected on the devastating flooding that took place in his country this past summer, causing 165 deaths and resulting in an estimated $2.3 billion USD in damage. He was quick to
The need to set aggressive goals, backed by meaningful numbers, is an obvious starting point in the fight against climate change. It’s common knowledge that if global warming exceeds 1.5C, we face the prospect of everything from the increased incidence of extreme weather conditions to irreparable damage to our ecosystems. Which is why a growing
If we’re going to take climate change seriously, we need to treat it like a house on fire. That analogy came from not just one, but two presenters in two separate ICLEI Daring Cities sessions yesterday, hailing from two different continents. “If your house is on fire, then everyone needs to respond to put it
With the launch of this week’s Daring Cities 2021 virtual conference, thought leaders from around the world are poised to exchange their knowledge and problem solving skills as part of the ongoing fight against climate change. And not unlike what it has done in supporting numerous other climate-focused events in the past, Bonn is hosting
ICLEI Director of Global Advocacy, Yunus Arikan, says Day One of Daring Cities 2021 (4 October 2021) will remind us how the fight against climate change is a race against time. And it’s a race in more ways than one. “This is a race like no other, because we have a long way to go.
Local and regional governments can talk all they want about tackling climate change, but at the end of the day, “nothing will happen on the ground without the financing… at least nothing of substance,” observes Nigel Jollands, the associate director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). “The only way we’re going to
The way Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie sees it, cities and towns should “always have a seat at the table” in the multi-level dialogue surrounding climate change. As mayor of a midwestern American city since 2004, this has been a long-held priority for Cownie – and now as the newly-elected president of ICLEI, it moves
If there was a common storyline at last week’s ICLEI World Congress, it was that local politicians are pushing hard on multiple fronts to enact positive change, often with more aggressive targets than their peers at the national level. Targets however, that require at least some degree of federal funding in order to come to
“ICLEI has been tackling climate change for more than 30 years and when we started, it was certainly not a hot topic, but today it is a critical topic and it is literally life-defining for many people,” observed Maryke van Staden at last week’s ICLEI World Congress 2021-22. She went on to note that in
“Humanity’s relationship with nature is broken.” That’s the unsettling observation UN Secretary General António Guterres made in a recent speech that Kobie Brand says helps keep things in perspective for her in her capacity as Global Director of the ICLEI Cities Biodiversity Center. “He said that we are in a crisis… and the defining issue
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