ICLEI/Thriving Earth Exchange Pilot Project Partnership
ICLEI USA and the American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s Thriving Earth Exchange® (TEX) have established a pilot partnership to advance both knowledge and practices contributing to resilient communities, and through activities to help mitigate the impact of climate change, natural hazards or natural disasters on lives and properties. The pilot project will pair up volunteer Earth and space scientists with a select group of ICLEI member communities to provide high-quality scientific input towards mitigation and adaptation planning that hopefully will lead to usable and implementable outcomes. Many communities across the United States can benefit from climate scientists and both ICLEI and TEX are looking forward to learning from this pilot project and hopefully expanding it to more local governments across the United States.
Here is a brief summary of the current ICLEI members who are participating in the pilot project:
When the leaders of Eugene, Oregon, decided to set the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets in the US, they wanted to ensure that the targets were based on the best, most up-to-date science. And when the City’s sustainability director exhausted the City’s internal expertise on the topic, Thriving Earth Exchange helped him connect to a local scientist with world-class credentials. Together, they are developing bold and scientifically sound greenhouse gas targets and are on track for adoption by city council in September of 2015.
The City of Oakland wants to introduce the notion of climate change resilient design as part of the city’s regular planning process. To demonstrate this, they are working on a design for a climate-change proof storm sewer system. They sought out scientific input on the design parameters as way to solidly communicating about science-based, climate resilient design.
Granite City is a smal
l Midwestern town that is struggling with a legacy of air pollution. Much of this pollution is attributed to a local steel mill, which is also an important economic engine for the city. The steel mill has taken steps to reduce its emissions, but many residents are still dubious about the overall quality of the air.
ICLEI USA and American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) partnered to advance knowledge and practices contributing to climate resilient communities across the United States.
For more information, please visit the web page – Thriving Earth Exchange’s City Solutions Through Science
or contact:
Riana Ackley, Senior Officer, Network Relations, ICLEI USA – riana.ackley@iclei.org
Raj Pandya, Program Director, Thriving Earth Exchange – rpandya@agu.org
Natasha Udu-gama, Director of Community Partnerships, Thriving Earth Exchange – NUdu-gama@agu.org
