ICLEI Roadmap for Ukraine: the main points
The ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) Roadmap activities are aimed at supporting Ukrainian cities in achieving the goals of the European Green Deal (EGD), as well as creating a framework that will help them integrate humanitarian response and short-term measures into the development of climate-neutral long-term recovery, climate change adaptation solutions and sustainable reconstruction.
ICLEI's roadmap in Ukraine aims to achieve the following goals:
- To empower local governments by providing cities with advisory services on sustainable planning, resilience assessment, and demand-driven adaptive risk management.
- Facilitate the exchange of best practices between Ukrainian and EU cities, share knowledge and provide technical assistance for better recovery.
- To help implement the visions and strategies of Ukrainian cities and communities through coordination between key stakeholders, joint financial applications, and technical assistance for project procurement.
March-May 2024. Online workshops to develop the Roadmap
To develop the Roadmap in 2024, three online workshops were organized in March, April and May 2024. The process involved 19 Ukrainian cities.
- At the first workshop, the main needs, challenges, and opportunities of Ukrainian cities were mapped and short- and long-term recovery projects were discussed.
- The second workshop analyzed the project portfolios and financial investment priorities of Ukrainian cities represented on the DREAM Platform. We focused on only 14 cities that have publicly available information on the DREAM Platform.
- The third workshop explored the key steps needed to develop Local Green Deals (LCDs) in Ukrainian cities. Local and international participants shared the experience of existing projects by DRESO, UNDP, CDP, and the German Energy Agency (DENA) to help cities replicate similar solutions.
June 2024. European Urban Resilience Forum. Valencia (Spain)
The results of the workshops were presented to the participants of the European Urban Resilience Forum EURESFO24 conference held in June 2024 in Valencia. The focus was on three sectors of strategic level and sustainable urban recovery:
- energy efficiency
- sustainable reconstruction
- socio-economic recovery
Each Ukrainian city was affected by the war in a different way, depending on various factors (geographical location, level of vulnerability, etc.). The common problems discussed at EURESFO24 for many were:
- power outages caused by shelling or attacks on energy infrastructure
- air, soil and water pollution due to military attacks
- limited access to drinking water
- partial damage and/or destruction of residential buildings, businesses, educational and cultural heritage sites, as well as various types of infrastructure (energy, water, transportation, etc.)
October 2024. European Conference on Sustainable Urban Development. Aalborg (Denmark)
The next step in the development of the Roadmap was the European Conference on Sustainable Urban Development in Aalborg (Denmark), which took place on October 1-3.
October 2024. Ukrainian Resilience Week. Lviv (Ukraine)
At the same time, Lviv hosted the Ukrainian Resilience Week (September 30 to October 4), during which the ICLEI Roadmap for Ukraine was presented to Ukrainians. The event aimed to present the key findings from three parallel workshops organized under the ICLEI Roadmap at EURESFO24.
During the presentation of the Roadmap, Nina Mia Chikesh, expert of the ICLEI European Secretariat, described the process of developing Local Green Deals. For Ukrainian communities that decide to join the transformation of Europe into the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050, there is a guide “Local Green Deals. Action Plan”, which can be found by this link.
Ukrainian communities have been granted a special observer city status in the European Commission's Intelligent Cities Challenge program. So far, four Ukrainian cities have already joined the program, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Novovolynsk, and Rivne.
At the end of the webinar, representatives of three Ukrainian cities-members of ICLEI, Mykolaiv, Korosten and Ovruch, spoke about their experience of working on Local Green Deals.
You can read the ICLEI Roadmap for Ukraine by this link.