Category: Local economic development

Connective Cities with side event @COP27

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Join us on November 12th, 6:30 – 8:00 pm UTC+2, virtually or at the German Pavilion at COP27 – and discuss challenges and solutions to energy supply and energy efficiency in cities.

Cities worldwide face dependence on energy imports and energy supply as well as high prices and price fluctuation due to wars, conflicts, and insecure situations worldwide. The expansion of renewable energies and energy efficiency in urban development are therefore currently gaining further momentum.

How can cities work towards energy autarky? What role can cities play in eliminating energy imports? To what extent can cities and municipalities produce their own energy?

The side-event is organized by Connective Cities and the German Association of Cities (Deutscher Städtetag) and addresses challenges and good practices examples in the fields of:

  • Energy supply and energy consumption of different sectors in cities
  • Good Practices in reducing energy consumption (e.g., nearly zero energy buildings; renewable energy; clean energy)

Keynote: Mrs. Lea Ranalder, UN-Habitat

Panel discussion:      

  • Mr. Andreas Wolter, Mayor, City of Cologne, Germany
  • Mrs. Melanie Grabowy, Mayor, City of Bonn, Germany
  • Mr. Houcine Jrad, Mayor, Municipality Houmt Souk, Tunisia
  • Dr. Georges Youssef, Municipality Menjez, Lebanon
  • Mme Gladys Wanga, Governor County Government of Homa Bay, Kenia

Moderation: Sabine Drees, German Association of Cities

Virtual participation is possible via:  Side Event | Responding Russia´s war: Towards Energy Autarky on a local level (german-climate-pavilion.de)

Voices from Connective Cities – Muncipality of Ras el-Matn

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The Mayor of Ras el-Matn municipality talks about how the municipality serves as the lungs of the capital Beirut in Lebanon, mainly due to its distigiushed eco-tourism projects. He also describes the municipality’s partnership with the private sector partner ‘Green Mount Recycling -GMR’ for sustainable waste management. The general director of GMR commended Ras el-Matn municiplaity and elaborates on their partnership project to promote sorting from source, particularly on how gender considerations were integrated into the planning and implementation of the project’s activities. Moreover, the Mayor also describes how the municipality developed a geospatial database with Connective Cities to promote waste sorting. Both speakers confirmed how this project will ultimately have environmental benefits and contribute to climate change mitigation. They also confirmed the benefits of joining Connective Cities network and peer learning particularly on the topic of waste management, as they learned about procedures that other companies are following in different countries such as the Philippines and Brazil using PPP.

Watch video at YouTube:

https://youtu.be/3uixwUwO9W8

Voices from Connective Cities – Abasan Al-Kabira municipality

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The representatives of Abasan Al-Kabira municipality in Palestine talk about how they are acting as Connective Cities’ Ambassador in Palestine, by organising several workshops for municipalities in Gaza to promote the regional network’s activities in different thematic areas such as crisis management, response to the Covid-19 pandemic, circular economy, local economic development and renewable energy. They also confirmed that working with Connective Cities on several projects and benefitting from knowledge exchange with their peers have enabled the municipality to progress in achieving its SDG-related targets and has resulted in developing capacities of the municipal employees.

Watch video at YouTube:

https://youtu.be/HcA0zewDtaQ

Partnerships for Circularity

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Through strategic partnerships, Jerash municipality in Jordan was able to overcome impediments in solid waste management and embark on a path of circularity.  By partnering with multiple stakeholders, the municipality succeeded in designing strategies for effective solid waste management and overcoming challenges related to insufficient operating budget, low collection coverage, waste dumping, and the associated environmental and public health concerns.

Municipal Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic – MENA region

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In the wake of the Pandemic, municipalities in the MENA region in both urban and rural areas need to rethink their modes of operation and accelerate their shift towards building resilience during the recovery process. In an effort to support municipalities that are members of the Connective Cities network in the MENA region, four thematic working groups were established as part of Connective Cities program ‘Municipal Recovery from the Pandemic.’ Objectives of this working group include promoting practice–oriented knowledge exchange between municipal and urban practitioners, facilitating peer learning on sustainable and innovative approaches to build resilience in cities through biodiversity and environmental protection, digitalisation of municipal services, and promoting social entrepreneurship for circularity. The program has resulted in the development of concrete urban solutions. Another outcome was the creation of partnerships between municipalities as well as with private sector actors to articulate the proposed solutions and scale up the impact. This report summarizes the main achievements until February 2022.

Trash to Cash

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Despite the weaknesses that permeate solid waste management in Lebanon, some municipalities have committed themselves to innovate solutions and overcome the challenges that include cost recovery issues, treatment and disposal difficulties, low capacity of dumpsites, lack of commitment from the local community for recycling, and a low demand for recycled products. Al Manara and Ghalboun municipalities are two examples on how municipalities were able to transform these challenges into opportunities.

Turning social business ideas into reality with yooweedoo

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Founders of social start-ups – so-called social entrepreneurs – have a one-stop contact point in Schleswig-Holstein: the yooweedoo programme. Based at Kiel University, yooweedoo facilitates social entrepreneurship with workshops, project advice, an ideas competition and an active network for sharing lessons learned.

German city of Wiesbaden: sustainable logistics to make the city more liveable

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Wiesbaden has taken an ambitious approach to make urban logistics more sustainable. Based on a political resolution, it has embarked on a three-phase journey, tackling delivery zones, emission-free transport and restructuring delivery services.

Strengthening Local Economic Development

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In the framework of the “Municipal know-how for host communities in the Middle-East programme”, the international community of practice Connective Cities and its initiators, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the German Association of Cities (DST) and Engagement Global gGmbH / Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW), organized an International Dialogue Event on “Strengthening Local Economic Development” in Lebanon, that was held in Beirut on October 24-26, 2017. The workshop addressed urban practitioners from Lebanon and Germany to share good practices and learn from each other.

Given the impacts of economic globalisation on local development worldwide, local governments play a crucial role in enabling more sustainable growth of urban areas. Local Economic Development (LED) is particularly important when it comes to strengthening the capacity of individual cities and regions to foster their resilience under the pressure of growing global competition. The LED approach encourages establishment of multi-actor partnerships and ensures joint development of local solutions to the existing economic challenges. Through multi-stakeholder dialogues as well as thorough analyses of current economic situations and conditions of public services and infrastructure at local level, LED helps identify concrete development opportunities and create competitive business locations at local level. This consequently can lead to a reduction in poverty as well as geographic disparities and enable sustainable economic growth.

The dialogue event was geared specifically towards supporting the analysis and planning of local economic development based on good practices up to the formulation of ideas for local projects to foster the local economy. Discussion of good practices that are relevant to the local urban context in Lebanon followed by peer-to-peer advice on actual challenges in a creative and interactive workshop environment constituted the main features of the event.

Subjects of exchange comprised

  • Improvement of municipal infrastructure and public services;
  • Development of local marketing concepts and sectoral economic strategies;
  • Enhancement of innovation and value chains in a context of regional urban-rural linkages
  • Provision of learning opportunities for entrepreneurs and integration of the informal sector

Social entrepreneurship enriches municipalities

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At the virtual dialogue event held on 20, 21 and 23 September 2021, over 45 participants from 10 countries took a look at social entrepreneurship from a range of municipal perspectives. They found that this rather new target group for local business development has a great deal of potential for municipalities. Innovative examples from Kiel, the municipality hosting the virtual event, as well as from the UK and Uganda, showcased the wide range of funding opportunities and the great benefits that can arise when municipalities and social entrepreneurs work together.

So far, many municipalities have given barely any thought to social entrepreneurship. The dialogue event provided them with a good first impression. The international dialogue and examples from around the world also inspired many participants to take concrete action to promote social entrepreneurship.