City Climate Planner to help city staff advance local climate action

City Climate Planner to help city staff advance local climate action This training and certification program, launched on Thursday 9 November at the Cities & Regions Pavilion at COP23 in Bonn will raise the global talent base of city climate planning professionals.

Cities all over the world are taking action to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. Cities are some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but they are also hubs of innovation that are developing key solutions.

In an effort to empower cities to tackle climate change more effectively, the City Climate Planner program was developed by the World Bank and global partners with funding from the Korea Green Growth Trust Fund. It is now led by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI) in partnership with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.

The CCP aims to offer training and certification to city staff and their partners on the five key steps to reduce GHG emissions: conducting a GHG inventory, setting emissions reduction targets, defining an action plan, implementing actions and tracking performance.

Currently, the CCP offers training and certification on the first step, conducting a GHG inventory, and the training for the second step is under development. Trainings have already been conducted in the Philippines, Argentina and Costa Rica as part of the pilot phase and the interest shown by local governments in particular in the Global South shows a willingness to build capacity in order to accelerate climate action.

This certification is the first of its kind, leading the way in the field of local climate action, providing local governments with quality assurance, policy guidance and technically sound practices.

For more information, visit http://cityclimateplanner.org/