ICLEI

Ambitious City Promises

In a rapidly urbanizing world, local governments and their communities play a pivotal role in tackling climate change and advancing sustainability in cities. The Ambitious City Promises project, led by ICLEI is designed to advance this work by capacitating local governments, engaging citizens and driving climate action through Low Emission Development Strategies (LEDS).

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.

Through Ambitious City Promises, local governments in Southeast Asia adapt this model of inclusive, ambitious climate action, mainstreaming low emission development strategies and creating new climate leaders. By spreading the vision behind the Promise of Seoul, Ambitious City Promises show how collective action taken in cities, with leadership from local governments, can contribute to achieving and ratcheting up national and global climate goals.

Aims

Through Ambitious City Promises, ICLEI aims to:

Develop and deploy bottom-up models of climate action planning: Ambitious City Promises demonstrates the impact of bottom-up climate action by engaging city residents and integrating stakeholder pledges into the City Promises. By consolidating and integrating community pledges into local action plans, cities can quantify community contributions and make the case for greater ambition at all levels of government. In this way, Ambitious City Promises creates new climate leaders at the municipal and community level.

Establish lasting mechanisms for knowledge sharing: Ambitious City Promises strengthens climate action by spreading good practices through city-to-city exchange and support. Inspired by the Promise of Seoul, this project, with the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, guides participating cities in establishing mechanisms that allow for peer learning while supporting and aligning with national climate action plans and policies.

Contribute to local, national and global climate goals: Ambitious City Promises accelerates ambitious climate action at the local level by equipping cities to define and implement low emission development strategies through City Promises shaped by inclusive, participatory processes. These Ambitious City Promises are designed to increase impact and allow for increasingly significant contributions to national and global climate goals.

Activities

Through Ambitious City Promises, local governments across Southeast Asia:

Participate in in-country consultations to facilitate capacity building, policy advice and technology transfer support provided by ICLEI, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the project advisory group.
Develop new or improved comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions inventories.
Actively engage city residents and key local climate stakeholders.
Use platforms to collect pledges from key stakeholders, including businesses and households.
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 via the carbonn Climate Registry (cCR).
Engage in learning and cooperation opportunities with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and other cities.

Ambitious City Promises

Ambitious City Promises

Aims

Activities

Where the Promise of Seoul is spreading

Indonesia

Philippines

Vietnam

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