Cities Climate Registry - carbonn

At World Mayors Summit on Climate, the role of local action in the climate change mitigation and adaptation was again stressed. The potential of cities should be taken into account in the international climate negotiations like it was done at the Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya a couple of weeks ago.

There, a plan of action on cities and biodiversity was adopted by the Nagoya Biodiversity City summit. Also in other ways, Nagoya was a success we only wish to see in the international climate negotiations: the COP16 meeting in Cancun started yesterday without any hope of a binding climate agreement.

At World Mayors Summit, cities from all over the world signed the Mexico city Pact on 21 November and thus committed to the reduction of urban greenhouse gas emissions. One way to facilitate local climate action and help cities make climate commitments that the world can count on is the recently published carbonn Cities Climate Registry carbonn (cCCR) developed by ICLEI and UNEP .

The cCCR supports the global credibility of local climate action by allowing transparency, accountability and comparability of climate actions, performance and commitments. Amongst other things, the cCCR integrates the climate commitments of cities into its database, allows cities to register their greenhouse gas reduction commitments and report their performance and actions.

See how your city could benefit from Cities Climate Registry!

Combatting Climate Change in 30 Ways, in 30 Days

As the UN Climate Convention meeting in Cancun approaches, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) wants to highlight that finding solutions to climate change is possible for communities, enterprises and countries in many ways.

UNEP wants to inspire action on climate change by presenting 30 ways to tackle the challenge in 30 days. It releases online case studies to show that solutions to climate change are available and could be copied and scaled up around the world if only governments, enterprises and communities were interested in moving towards low-emission climate-resilient growth.


Read more about the case studies that include Indian solar loans programme, The Green Passport Campaign and improved stoves in Haiti and Nigeria.

More information: UNEP 30 Ways in 30 Days
Picture: UNEP / Indian Solar Programme

Roadmap for Zero Carbon Britain

A recently published report by the UK Centre for Alternative Technology suggests that the UK could become carbon-free by 2030. This means that in 20 years, the UK could reduce its carbon emissions by 90 % and offset the remaining 10 % of the emissions.

The report provides a road map for achieving the goal of a carbon-free society. To this end, adopting environmental technologies, reducing fossil fuel use, increasing resource efficiency and significant societal behaviour changes are all necessary. The report offers a variety of actions that make zero carbon society seem possible, at the same time creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs and addressing environmental challenges.

Individuals and communities must play their part in decreasing carbon emissions. Here, the key is to promote new technologies, eco-design and foster new environmentally friendly social norms. Most importantly, however, the report states a international climate agreement is needed.

More information: Environmental Technologies Action Plan.
Read the Zero Carbon Britain report.