[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Ecocity and ICLEI trip report

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt



Colleagues – A rather belated report on my trip to the Ecocity World Summit and the ICLEI World Mayor’s Summit on Climate Change held a little over a month ago in Nantes, France.
 
Since this came together at pretty much the last moment, I was only able to attend the final day of the 3-day Ecocity conference.  So I made it to only a few sessions, all of which were focused on various approaches to sustainability, with
 an emphasis on energy, transportation, and city infrastructure.  I don’t recall any particularly noteworthy presentation, although as a numbers nerd there were some interesting ideas in a session on sustainability indicators.  I assume that at some point the
 presentations and/or a summary of them will be made available, but I haven’t seen that yet.
 
I spoke at a session on “Renewable energy and energy transition: leveraging local resources.”  I provided a quick look at Boulder and our sustainability efforts (including, of course, our Open Space and compact city design), then focused
 on our Climate Action Plan and energy initiatives.  I was – as usual – more specific than most speakers, which seemed to go over well; after the session I spent about an hour or so chatting with folks, and being interviewed, about Boulder’s efforts.  I’ve
 attached as a pdf my presentation, which as usual cobbled together slides that I have and several tossed my way by Jonathan, and then modified and organized for this specific talk.
 
Following Ecocity was the co-located ICLEI meeting.  This was focused on two topics: financing local climate action, and adoption of the Nantes Declaration of Mayors and Subnational Leaders on Climate Change.  The former was interesting,
 but aimed largely at developing countries or places that have rather different approaches than we do (or can have) in Boulder.  The Declaration is meant to be a lead-in to the COP15 that will be held in Paris; I was one of perhaps a half-dozen mayors chosen
 to say a few words about its importance.  It’s clear that ICLEI thinks that most of the really innovative and useful action is taking place at the city level, something obviously the case in the US but apparently also around the world.  They want cities to
 have a much greater voice in future climate conferences, not letting the national governments, once again, offer up lots of lovely platitudes and then effectively agree to nothing much at all.  You can get more information at:
http://www.iclei.org/worldmayorssummit.html
 
As usual, perhaps the main benefit from attending these meetings was making connections with folks from around the world – and, I should add, also keeping Boulder as an internationally well-recognized leader in sustainability.  In particular,
 I had numerous conversations with the ICLEI leadership team, both the politicos and staff.  I also had conversations with a representative of the US State Department who wants to get US cities more involved in the administration’s sustainability efforts and
 coordinate much more interchange between US and foreign cities; I’ll pass this on to my contacts at the National League of Cities since they should follow up.  And after a chat with a rep from the World Bank who heads up their work on cities and climate change,
 I was invited to set up a presentation to them on our muni efforts the next time I’m in DC.
 
One final note: when we were first invited to speak at Ecocity I thought it would be a great way to involve another councilmember since I had been to a similar conference last year.  However, they didn’t seem willing to fund the trip, and
 with rare exceptions I (and Jane, with whom I always check) have had the fairly obvious position that it doesn’t make sense to spend significant money on these events.  Shortly thereafter, I got invited to the ICLEI meeting, which was very clearly only for
 mayors, but they too didn’t offer travel money.  Then, with perhaps a month to go, ICLEI indicated there was a “scholarship” they were holding for me, and Ecocity indicated they would pay for some of the hotel costs (how much actually wasn’t entirely clear
 until I checked in to the hotel).  After some clarification, it seemed worth taking the risk of going; in the end, about 2/3 of the relevant trip costs were paid for by the two groups, and I picked up the rest so that Boulder had no expenses at all.  It has
 often been complicated to resolve these issues, getting our costs fully (or at least mostly) paid for, and convincing groups that mayors are not the only appropriate attendees, but we’ll need to keep working on this since Boulder will no doubt continue to
 be invited to more such conferences.
 
--Matt
 
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