From Daring Cities to Town Hall COPs, how ICLEI is taking on local-to-global climate action
Throughout 2024, Daring Cities spotlighted the Town Hall COPs initiative as an innovative mechanism linking local climate emergency action to national and global efforts, empowering communities and subnational governments worldwide to make meaningful contributions to climate commitments on local, national, and global levels ahead of COP30 in 2025.
Town Hall COPs are designed to empower local governments and their communities to collectively address climate action, grounding ambitious local commitments in alignment with global climate goals. Building on thousands of climate emergency declarations and neutrality commitments made by councils worldwide, this initiative invites local actors to actively shape climate policies that directly impact their communities and, through these local dialogues, influence broader climate policies.
Deriving from Daring Cities –and spearheaded by ICLEI Global Executive Committee leaders, Katja Dörner, Mayor of Bonn, Germany, and chair of the Climate Action Governance Portfolio; Axel Grael, Mayor of Niterói, Brazil, and chair of the Climate Action Support Portfolio; and Barbara Buffaloe, Mayor of Columbia, Missouri, USA, who serves on the ICLEI Regional Executive Committee for North America– national associations of cities in Germany, Brazil, and the United States adopted resolutions supporting CHAMP. The resolutions also propose the Town Hall COPs initiative as a new model for local-to-global climate action and advocacy to secure strong, multilevel NDCs on the road to COP30.
Charting the roadmap to Belém, Daring Cities is committed to promoting the Town Hall COPs to catalyze multilevel collaboration and amplify local climate perspectives within broader climate processes toward a just, equitable, and resilient future.
Pushing the Town Hall COPs forward: ICLEI announces partnership with EarthDay.org
At COP29, ICLEI announced a new partnership with EARTHDAY.ORG (EDO) to kickstart the Earth Day Global Conversation. It aims to engage mayors and city governments worldwide in public dialogues about the benefits of renewable energy.
The announcement was made at the Multilevel Action & Urbanization Pavilion, at an ICLEI-hosted event titled Town Hall COPs in the New Era of Local-Global Climate Action and Advocacy, held on 20 November during COP29’s thematic day for Urbanization, which highlighted the crucial role that cities play in implementing the international community’s vision for climate action.
Starting in April 2025 and continuing through the year, these ‘Conversations’ will unite communities in a collective push for renewable energy, aiming to strengthen the Town Hall COPs initiative as a tool for local and regional governments to connect their communities for climate emergency action at all levels.
“This new partnership ensures community-level actions and engagements are connected to national and global agendas,” said Yunus Arikan, ICLEI Director of Global Advocacy and the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency Focal Point.
This initiative will showcase leadership at the municipal level, and EDO and ICLEI will work with mayors and local leaders to invite businesses, parents, schools, unions, and faith groups –the entire community– to come together to discuss their route to renewable energy.
for EARTHDAY.ORG.
“We know that talking is often the very first step on the road to change, EARTHDAY.ORG wants to help spark a million new conversations across the globe about how local communities can investigate, invest and integrate renewable energy to their own advantage,” said Kathleen Rogers, President, EARTHDAY.ORG at the partnership press release.
EDO is the global leader in Earth Day advocacy, observed by over one billion people every 22 April. Under the theme “Our planet, our power,” next year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day. We invite everyone to support the banner #RenewableEnergyNow and to get involved with the campaign here.
Bringing Daring Cities 2024 key findings to COP29
This year, representatives from cities, towns, regions, and their partners gathered in-person and online at the Daring Cities 2024 to share knowledge, showcase innovative climate actions, and foster ambitious collaborations to power collective action to respond to the climate emergency. The results? A comprehensive set of key findings which emerges from three core pillars: Multilevel partnerships and governance, bottom-up approaches for inclusive cities, and holistic and integrated solutions.
During COP29’s 20 November event, Daring Cities brought these key findings to a broader audience, particularly connecting the Town Hall COPs initiative to accelerate multilevel collaboration and community engagement in NDCs preparation and implementation ahead of COP30.
The event explored how Town Hall COPs fit into the current global climate arena and how local and subnational governments can drive this initiative forward, paving the way for impactful local climate action that resonates worldwide.
