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

Who's your World Environment Day hero?

Tomorrow, on June 5th, we are celebrating World Environment Day (WED) 2010. WED has been organized by UNEP since 1972 and is aimed to be the biggest, most widely celebrated, global day for positive, environmental action. As part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, this year’s event will celebrate the incredible diversity of life on Earth under the theme Many Species. One Planet. One Future.

Last year, the topic of World Environment Day was climate change and the highlight of the celebrations was to launch the Climate Heroes. This year the Climate Heroes initiative has been broadened beyond just climate change-related advocates to include exceptional individuals advocating solutions for all environmental issues.

WED Heroes are individuals who inspire and motivate people to environmental actions by undertaking exceptional personal feats, high-profile expeditions, and other acts of environmental activism to demonstrate their commitment to the planet.

In the end, the WED heroes is a call for each of us to do what we can: from adopting the simplest habits like turning off running water when we are brushing our teeth, to organizing a public or workplace event for World Environment Day or even rowing across the Pacific Ocean, like a WED Hero Roz Savage did in 2009, and later walked 600 miles from London to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference.

See the World Wide WED here and find activities near you.

Pictures: UNEP