Category: Sustainable mobility

Solar pumps, e-mobility, and climate-friendly street lighting in Sub-Saharan Africa

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The workshop is part of a working group for Renewable Energy Applications for Cities convened by Connective Cities in collaboration with the Romanian development agency RoAid.

Apart from the municipal experts and the Connective Cities team, the conference was graced by the attendance of Daniella Dobre (RoAid), Massimiliano Pedretti (Delegation of the European Union to Tanzania), and Dr. Tobias Godau (GIZ ProWaS – Water Security and Climate Resilience for Urban Areas in Tanzania.

The conference was a follow-up event of the kick-off workshop in Nairobi in 2023, focusing on the topic of Street Lighting and E-Mobility applications in the urban context.

Participants

The participant experts represented the cities of Nairobi, Kisumu and County of Baringo (Kenya), City of Kasungu (Malawi), Gulu city (Uganda), City of Dar es Salaam, City of Mwanza and City of Tanga (Tanzania). The Working Group is accompanied by the international representatives from the cities of Gersthofen (Germany), Slatina and Alba Luluia (both Romania).

Participating institutions were:

  • Malawi Local Government Association (MALGA)
  • Regional Administration and Local Government Tanzania (PO-RALG)
  • The City Climate Gap Fund (through the project support office of the Global Covenant of Mayors)
  • The African Development Bank (through the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Department)

Ideas presented:

All ten cities presented their projects and received advice. All ten cities are familiar with the prerequisites for funding and have completed 70% of these requirements.

Kisumu, Kenya:

Improving electric mobility and street lighting in the city of Kisumu. Piloting a PPP model for the deployment of charging infrastructure for 2- and 3-wheel motorcycles.

Baringo, Kenya:

Solarization of a water pump that pumps water from Lake Baringo to a treatment plant in Kabernet town.

Gulu, Uganda:

Solarization of the main street of Gulu City.

Mwanza, Tanzania:

Solar Project on Ijinga Island generated from solar panels to operate water pumps that push water to a treatment tank. Fundraising stage, feasibility analysis completed already.

Nairobi: Energy efficiency and Solarization of markets. Target pilot projects: City Market, City Park Market, Kangundo Road Market and Gikomba Market. Energy audits for these sites have been carried out.

Dar es Salaam: Solar powered street lighting along market street incorporating solar power radio for the market and charging stations for three wheelers.

Tanga: The cites faces an ever-growing landfill. The city intends to undertake a waste to energy project. To begin, the city therefore aims to undertake waste value chain analysis. This will highlight the waste characteristics and the attendant calorific values.

Kasungu: The City of Kasungu presented a double challenge of deforestation due to the heavy usage of biofuels (firewood and charcoal) and the high cost of power for lighting the streets compounded by lack of such streetlights in many areas. The city therefore prioritizes for the project to prepare a solution for solar street lighting still integrated with the main grid for back-up.

Malawi Local Government Association (MALGA): The proposed project focuses on installing solar-powered streetlights to improve lighting in selected municipalities and cities in Malawi. This initiative aims to enhance the local business environment, improve security, and contribute to local economic development.

Targeted Municipalities: Kasungu, Karonga, Luchenza, Mangochi.
Targeted Cities: Zomba City, another city to be determined.

Next Steps of the Working Group

In the journey to support the cities to develop solutions to their challenges, Connective Cities and RoAid plan to continue their support via:

  • Insight sessions and webinars: present emerging knowledge in short learning sessions.
  • Best practices: Publishing of innovative solutions of the collaborating cities.
  • Conferences / Workshops: to bring the city experts together to scale up peer to peer and associated learning.
  • Expert missions: will be availed to city experts with clear cases and inputs for experiential learning and exchange. This will include virtual formats where cities are connected according to relevance of needs.

Promoting Sustainable Mining Industries

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The online event took place on 23 April and explored the challenges and opportunities in promoting sustainable mining industries and the critical role of cities in driving positive change in the sector. Key discussion points included:

  • The role of cities in promoting sustainable mining industries: How can cities actively contribute to the promotion of sustainable mining practices, taking into account environmental and social impacts?
  • Maximising benefits for local communities: What strategies are in place to ensure that mining activities best benefit local communities, both economically and socially?
  • Repurposing closed mining sites: What innovative approaches exist to transform them into new assets for communities and promote sustainable development?

The event featured insightful inputs from various sources:

City-to-city collaboration is key to streamlining climate neutrality and decentralized energy production

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Together with the Connective Cities, the Association of German Cities organized a side event in the German Pavilion at the COP28 World Climate Conference in Dubai on the question of “What solutions are there for sustainable and decentralized energy generation and supply at local level”. On 6 December at 2 p.m. local time, representatives from German and African cities (Cologne, Bonn, eThekwini and Abuja) discussed their local innovations for climate-friendly energy solutions.

In her keynote speech, Katja Dörner, Vice-President of the German Association of Cities, Mayor of Bonn, and ICLEI Co-Chair for Climate Action, emphasized the importance of a socially just and participatory approach to a climate and energy transition. She emphasized that the voice of cities in climate negotiations is essential to achieve global goals.

She showed how the city of Bonn can achieve climate neutrality by 2035 and called on the federal level to make swift changes to support the local level. The EU and the German federal level must create the framework for a climate-friendly energy transition. She again emphasized the importance of making climate protection and adaptation a mandatory task for local authorities.

An E-Mobility HUB in Lviv – Climate Innovations from Ukraine

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The ECCA is a biennial Conference aiming to inspire climate consultants, climate services developers, and policy deliverers at transnational, national, regional, municipal, and community levels to confidently implement effective measures to adapt to the changing climate, especially in the face of increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as flooding, heatwaves, and wildfire.

The 6th ECCA 2023 was organized by a European-wide collaboration led by influential actors JPI Climate and Climate project, MAGICA, supported by the European Commission. The Conference has been convened by projects that have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Program.

The conference Program

The ECCA conference took place in Dublin, Ireland from 19-21 June covering the following thematic areas:

  1. Stepping Up Climate Action: Support Through Climate Platforms and Services.
  2. Adaptation Responses to Sea Level Rise and Coastal Change.
  3. Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation.
  4. Preparing for More Frequent and Severe Climate Extremes.
  5. Reframing Societal Transformation by Challenging Underlying Assumptions.
  6. Climate and Social Resilience of Future Energy Infrastructure and Systems.

Bending the Linear Economy On Urban Metabolism

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“In the Rome Declaration of 2021, the G20 Leaders stressed the link between sustainable urbanization and the development of circular economy to preserve resources and deliver on climate and biodiversity global goals. […] To meet ambitious but necessary net zero targets, waste, water and energy provision have to change dramatically and at a large scale. This includes new technologies, transformations in governance and regulatory systems, the implementation of just-transition financial mechanisms and strengthened international cooperation, combined with enhanced technical cooperation and joint capacity building among emerging and developing markets.”

INTERSECTING is distributed by the Global Solutions Initiative. It is geared towards think tanks, civil organizations, international institutions, in particular the G20/T20.

India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX)

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To build cities of the future, which provide good quality of life, improved economic robustness, and harmony with nature, India needs unique solutions that are not only efficient but also offer services and benefits to all segments of society. It has chosen to leverage data in creating these solutions by facilitating the real-time sharing of data among stakeholders through an open, neutral, and secure platform, the India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX).  IUDX is all about the use of data for public good and enabling data providers to create innovative services and generate value.

Envisaging the Future of Cities

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Urbanization is intertwined with several existential global challenges: Cities do not exist in isolation from global challenges. The emergence of urbanization as a global megatrend is intertwined with the existential challenges that the world has faced in the last 50 years, including climate change, rising inequality and the rise in zoonotic viruses with the latest being the novel coronavirus pandemic, which triggered the worst public health crisis in a century and the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. These challenges will in different ways, leave their imprints on the future of cities.

In UN-Habitat’s new World Cities Report 2022 – Envisaging the Future of Cities, three scenarios, or three paths were identified, that the world’s cities could take at this critical juncture.

  • In the worst-case or “high damage” scenario, we assume that policy-making and governance will become even weaker and more ineffective. The destructive effects of the pandemic, climate change, inequality, poverty, and long-running conflicts, if not adequately addressed, will have disastrous consequences for cities in both developed and developing countries, though the latter would suffer most because of existing vulnerabilities. If 80 per cent of the economic damage inflicted by COVID-19 persists for a decade, then the number of people living in poverty could increase by more than 200 million by 2050.
  • The middling, or “pessimistic scenario”, foresees a reversion to the status quo before the pandemic. This business-as-usual approach would be characterised by exploitation and exclusion of informal sector workers, systemic discrimination of the urban poor, unimaginative policies and poor implementation on the climate crisis, public transport, or urban regeneration programmes and renewal. Cities could be locked into cycles of poverty, poor productivity, unhealthy living conditions and become inequality traps for decades.
  • The report, however, also envisages an optimistic future. Governments and donors would invest in urban development sufficiently to create just, resilient, healthy, and prosperous cities everywhere. By 2050, there could be 260 million people lifted out of poverty compared to the pre-COVID baseline. National governments would embrace peace and diplomacy to resolve their differences rather than pursuing military action, avoiding drastic global economic consequences such as those inflicted on the supply of food and energy by the war in Ukraine. Governments would manage the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic competently, balancing health outcomes and economic recovery, and thus smoothing out global supply chains. They would also prepare adequately for the next pandemic.

Safe, colourful, liveable streets and places in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

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Two 30 km/h zones were planned in Belo Horizonte as traffic calming measures and successfully implemented in 2019 to reduce car traffic and make neighbourhoods safer and more liveable. This change process took place with the broad participation of the local retail community, the residents and, in particular, the local schools. The public acceptance was very high. The project was inspired by peer-to-peer consultations during a dialogue event in Bremen and a subsequent expert mission of German experts to Belo Horizonte. The project now serves as a model for further similar action in other districts.

Video: Pop-up bike lanes during the Pandemic

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Reducing the number of accidents, while at the same time increasing safety for everyone? Bogotá showed us, that this is possible and that the key to promote sustainable urban planning and environmentally friendly mobility are pop-up bike lanes. The concept of pop-up bike lanes, which emerged especially due to the COVID pandemic, is spreading not only in Bogotá, but also worldwide, for example in Berlin.

Both cities face the challenge that for a long time the principle of the car-friendly city was pursued in urban and transport planning. With an increase in cyclists during the pandemic and the limitation of public space, it was necessary to rethink and meet the needs of residents, for example to increase road safety for cyclists. This Good Practice outlines the undertaken measures in transport planning, the opinions of residents to the new concept and how in the end all road users can benefit from pop-up bike lanes in the long term, whether in Bogotá or Berlin.

The Protagonists are:

  • Sebastián Posada García (Bicycle and Pedestrian Sub-Dictorate, Bogotá)
  • Dr. Lea Wisken (Head of Cycling and Pedestrian Coordination Office, Berlin)

Watch video at YouTube (with mit English or Spanish sub-title):

https://youtu.be/TQGLzHmxxE4

Toolbox citizen engagement for sustainable mobility planning and implementation

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The success of sustainable mobility plans and projects often depends on the commitment and acceptance by citizens. Therefore, citizen engagement in planning and implementation of sustainable mobility in municipalities turns out to be a key success factor not only for impactful implementation of new concepts, but also for co-creating smart sustainable mobility measures. This happens when solutions are developed together with stakeholders.

Due to the consequences of the pandemic citizen engagement is limited or impossible. This can endanger the success and/or slowing down necessary sustainable mobility projects. For this reason, the Connective Cities working group «Sustainable Mobility after COVID-19» created a prototype for «Toolbox citizen engagement for sustainable mobility planning and implementation».

The toolbox covers different levels and degrees of participation. It is a collection of successful tools and roadmaps that can be used in different phases of sustainable mobility planning and implementation in and after the pandemic.