[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: ICLEI World Congress report

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues – This is a report on my recent trip to Seoul to attend the ICLEI World Congress.  As you may recall, ICLEI is an international organization – to which we belong – of cities interested in sustainability.  ICLEI provides practical
 assistance, promulgates methods of measuring success, and in particular focuses on greenhouse gas emission reductions and is significantly involved in international efforts to that end.  I was elected last fall to ICLEI’s North America (USA and Canada) Regional Executive Committee (RExCom), and this World Congress – which is held only once every three years – was the first time for all of the regional committees and the global executive committee to get together.
 
Some of the interesting/relevant aspects of this conference include:
         
- I presented at three sessions (making for ten presentations over a five week period, a personal record I’d prefer not to beat anytime soon).  I was also invited to two “side events” put on by UNEP, the UN Environment Program.  In addition there were two executive committee meetings, as well as many plenary talks and other working sessions, so I was kept quite busy.
        
- My first talk was on resilience, where I focused on our efforts to protect against flood and fire.  The other main speaker was from Vancouver, and she naturally talked about their work to deal with flooding from sea level rises.  Although I mostly noted our physical approach – open space, underpasses that function as flood-control structures, etc. – since that’s easier to show in pictures, there was good discussion about related issues such as housing, assisting lower-income residents, etc.  Quite a few people were impressed with Boulder’s efforts.
       
- Next up was a talk on “eco-mobility” at which I was asked to discuss the Boulder Junction transit-oriented development.  Since the other presenters were all from large urban areas (as were most of the attendees), I put this in the context of how a smaller, not-so-urban place can still integrate land-use planning and transit to improve mobility and reduce auto dependence.  As always, it is amazing how much other cities – in this case, particularly in China – are investing in transportation infrastructure and how serious they are about getting folks out of cars.
     
- Finally, on the main stage and with a bigger audience, I was one of several presenters who spoke to innovative ideas from our respective cities.  I chose to talk about open space, our growth boundary, bicycle program, energy efforts including building codes, EnergySmart and SmartRegs, and of course the muni, and how those tied together to help make us more sustainable and resilient.  It was a pretty quick run-through, but many people let me know that they were very interested in our efforts and very impressed by them.
      
- The main side-event I attended was a day-and-a-half session on indicators/metrics for sustainability.  A number of cities talked about how they collected and used data, with cities in the developing world not surprisingly focusing more on their lack of good data, while several of us from the US and Europe noted that we were more likely drowning in data, and the real issue is how to best use and analyze it.  On that topic, we had an excellent presentation from Dr. Anu Ramaswami.  I had met her some years ago when she was at UCD (I believe) and working with Denver (she still owns a house in Boulder); she is now at the University of Minnesota but works with the UN and other agencies.  She tries to understand how to best analyze the information on sustainability and greenhouse gases that we collect, realizing that simple gross tallies don’t really inform us very well (a point I completely agree with, and in fact I noted that such simplistic calculations often produce quite misleading results).  I think we should consider connecting with her and perhaps taking part in her research.
       
- The opening plenary by Jorgen Randers, co-author of The Limits to Growth in 1972 was quite interesting.  Whether or not his updated metrics are accurate, his take on why the world isn’t doing much about climate change was certainly
 blunt and spot-on.  I haven’t found a video of his talk, but if I do I’ll pass it on.
   
- As is usual in such forums, there were a variety of agreements we were asked to sign onto, and after checking with our staff I did add our name to the Seoul Declaration and also the Compact of Mayors (which we may well have joined previously).  Both of these and others of this sort are general agreements about creating a more sustainable urban future, and contain goals and objectives that are fully in line with Boulder’s ongoing efforts.
      
- The ICLEI executive committee meetings were fairly interesting, although pretty much all of the substantive work – such as creating a new strategic plan, which was very good – had of course been done in advance.  It’s still hard
 to tell how effective ICLEI really is, or how useful it is for us to be involved – although it’s arguably always valuable for us to be considered as one of the leading cities in the realm of sustainability internationally.
       
- ICLEI USA has been struggling to some extent, but has a fairly new executive director who is very good, and their point person on energy lives in Denver and is someone I know from her work at DOE.  Our RexCom is going to try to
 meet this summer to better figure out our role and also our relationship with ICLEI USA and ICLEI Canada.

- As with the FOCUS 2015 forum at the French Embassy, much of this event was centered around the upcoming COP21 in Paris.  ICLEI is recognized by the UN and so gets a seat of some sort at the table, and is trying to significantly increase the clout of cities, along with other city organizations (which includes the National League of Cities).  ICLEI has a very large international presence with most of its members from outside the US.  The politics of the COP is about what you’d expect, and it’s not at all clear that cities will get the role and visibility they want.  Which in turn means it’s far too early to know if it makes sense for anyone from Boulder to go to the COP.  Unfortunately the next executive committee meetings are scheduled for Paris during the COP, but that by itself isn’t enough incentive to attend.  There is still a very small chance I’ll be invited to join an NLC delegation, and I suppose we (probably staff) might be invited to join some other delegation that would have some useful access, and not just be among the tens of thousands of attendees who are on the outside looking in.
        
- I of course met lots of interesting people during the conference, and got to know the top ICLEI staff quite well.  A remarkable number of people have been to Boulder, have relatives in Boulder, attended CU, or otherwise know far
 more about our small city than one might imagine.  I connected with the deputy mayor of Shimla, India, which is the city Boulder will be working with on resilience thanks to an ICMA grant; he was most interested in our efforts and the upcoming collaboration (Carl Castillo will be heading there very shortly).  I also met Jeb Brugmann, ICLEI’s first secretary general, and, naturally, someone with many Boulder connections.  And I now have some good friends in New Zealand.  Suffice to say that many of the city folks I met were very aligned with Boulder and their cities were doing some interesting and innovative things, although many of them were equally unhappy with their state/regional and national governments (does this sound familiar?) for their complete lack of leadership and, often, their antagonism toward dealing with, or even acknowledging, the impacts of climate change.

Finally, I’ve attached a conference summary that you might find interesting.
 
--Matt
 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: ICLEI_WC_Summary_Pack_FINAL.doc
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 2116096 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://list.ci.boulder.co.us/pipermail/bouldercouncilhotline/attachments/20150427/541d7d5d/attachment.obj