How can cities and businesses better collaborate towards their sustainability goals? More specifically, how can they agree on a common vision for urban sustainable development and climate neutrality in particular? Local Green Deals offer an innovative strategic and action- oriented approach to public governance that can help set the right structures for this collaboration. They are a reply to effectively implement the goals of the European Green Deal locally. Picture this: If sustainability management was a (stellar) constellation bringing together all sustainability policies and initiatives, being the stars, in a city administration. Then, Local Green Deals (LGD) would definitely be the northern star to guide your way forward.
Through Local Green Deals, ICLEI Europe aims to mainstream a successful approach to city-business collaboration. The power of this collaboration was recently showcased by ICLEI’s Governance Innovation team and ambitious local governments in three events: a session on City-Business Collaboration organised as part of the Aalborg’s European Sustainable Cities and Towns Conference back in October 2024, and two training and coaching sessions which took place during the November 2024 edition of the Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC).
ICLEI as the telescope
In the Intelligent Cities Challenge, an increasing number of cities are using the Local Green Deal approach to navigate their Climate City Contracts’ journey to climate neutrality, and specifically to design and implement collaborative actions to accelerate progress. These cities expressed a need for continued guidance and instruments on how to adopt Local Green Deals. If we go back to the astronomy analogy, ICLEI Europe aims to support local governments by providing the telescope, making sure the sky is clearly seen at night, for decision makers (or astronomers) to take action and connect even more stars.
This fall, ICLEI Europe provided the cities with new key tools during the Aalborg Conference and in the final phase of ICC. Through training and coaching sessions, ICLEI Europe showed how LGDs can activate city-business collaboration towards climate neutrality, showcasing city examples with effective business engagement models alongside the perspective of the private sector. These sessions equipped participants with practical tips and hands-on experience which will support ICC core cities in completing their first LGDs, and hopefully encourage many more local governments to follow suit.
Clearer skies
Local climate alliances represent great governance frameworks for cities to work with businesses and other local stakeholders towards tackling funding, procurement and regulatory challenges and opportunities for decarbonisation; the work of the Klimaalliancen Aalborg provides a great example of such an approach and participating businesses (like IBF A/S, Eiffage, and many more) shared practical tips. For example, overcoming private companies' skepticism towards the public sector can come from showing them the real benefits of LGD collaborations. Examples are getting access to funding, networking, policy influencing and capacity building opportunities through the help of the city administrations.
Depending on the context, challenges remain - such as the lack of political support to empower staff and the lack of capacity to implement change management in public administrations as well as the lack of skills needed to approach the business sector to co-design mutually beneficial and systemic collaboration initiatives for sustainability action.
The Local Green Deal approach can be very helpful in supporting local governments to align with the Aalborg Conditions, and specifically with their three key pillars shared/multi-level governance, finance, and cohesion - in that they are all fundamental to localise the European Green Deal effectively.
Beyond coaching, three publications can support the cities in their LGD implementation journey. Access the Blueprint for Action here, the Municipal Sustainability Management Report here and the Urban Sustainability Management report here. And if you want more astrology metaphors, listen to our latest episode of the ICLEI Europe podcast “Local Voices for Sustainability”.
Learn more about ICLEI’s work on Governance Innovation here.