Growing amounts of plastic waste pose challenges to municipalities worldwide. Only small quantities can be recycled by type to create closed loops. Almost 40 local practitioners from 13 cities, nine countries and four continents intensively exchanged their experiences on the subject of "plastic waste" and jointly developed solutions and project ideas.

The municipal exchange of experience and knowledge on the topic of urban development in the context of climate change and climate resilience brought together 32 practitioners from 17 Latin American and German cities in Niterói, Brazil. In interactive formats, the participants were able to gain comprehensive learning experiences and to jointly develop new project ideas.

The dialogue event in Bandung offered the approximately 30 municipal experts from Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal and Germany a platform for the exchange of knowledge on the subject of green urban infrastructure. The three key themes of waste management, water conservation and sustainable construction were identified for future regional cooperation. As a result of the workshop, the participants developed 10 new project ideas.

What are the key factors for a successful local service delivery that reaches all citizens? This question was the focus of the expert workshop organised by Connective Cities at the UCLG World Congress. Municipal experts from Bonn, Mannheim, Nairobi and uMhlathuze presented their approaches which were then discussed with the workshop participants.

During a study trip to Cologne and Berlin, Delegates from the Zimbabwe Urban Councils Association of Zimbabwe (UCAZ) and the chairman and general secretary of the Local Government Association of Zambia (LGAZ) learned about the structure and functioning of different German municipal associations and their responsibilities for their member municipalities.

More than 40 experts from cities and municipalities, government institutions and international donor organisations from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia met under the overarching theme "Integrated Urban Development" for the first workshop in the region.

The first meeting was attended by representatives of Jordanian municipalities, local councils and the Ministry of Local Administration. The participants' project ideas ranged from integrated solutions for economic and ecological urban development to support for municipal capacity development.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the participants of the kick-off event identified "Adaptation to Climate Change" as a cross-cutting theme for their projects. Other topics include urban services, sector governance and spatial planning, which will be taken up again in dialogue events and webinars.

The call for themes 2020 for German municipalities and German municipal companies closed and will soon be evaluated. Connective Cities would like to thank all municipalities and municipal companies that participated by submitting a theme. Starting from mid-January Connective Cities will make the results of the evaluation public and will announce the selected themes and the respective host cities for international exchange of experiences starting from the second half of 2020 in Germany.

The local implementation of the Agenda 2030 is a priority topic for municipalities but also for their local government associations worldwide. From 7 to 9 April 2020 in Cologne/Germany Connective Cities offers local government associations the opportunity to exchange on their current projects on localising the SDGs, discuss their challenges and develop new joint project ideas.