Local Governments for Sustainability
It’s in our name.
Since our founding three decades ago, when a group of impassioned mayors asserted their role in fighting environmental pollution at the United Nations—a gathering that came to be known as the “international council for local environmental initiatives”—ICLEI has been the leading network of local governments dedicated to sustainability.
Build your custom journey
To help cities, towns, and counties create more sustainable communities, we provide:
- The Network
- The frameworks
- The Tools
- The Technical Assistance
Contact us to map a custom member journey and become part of the largest and longest-running network of governments advancing sustainability and climate action.
How We Work with Local Governments
We work with governments at all stages of planning and action. From volunteer committees representing towns of 1,000 people to climate action departments in mega-cities, ICLEI has the expertise, resources, and tools to support your sustainability goals.
Access Tools
Make your data do the work
ICLEI’s industry-leading tools, including ClearPath, have been used by more than 600 local governments to measure and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, set science-based targets, prepare for climate impacts, prioritize sustainability actions and collaborate in real time to implement tested solutions.
Receive Technical Assistance
Work with the people that wrote the protocols
Each ICLEI member is assigned a dedicated ICLEI technical advisor to serve as your go-to resource for greenhouse gas emissions management, sustainability and climate planning, biodiversity and SDG action, peer-city collaboration, and more. We have regular check-ins to ensure you’re advancing on your member journey.
Follow Proven Frameworks
Build holistic, systemic change
Hundreds of communities have followed the ICLEI Five Pathways approach to sustainability, and continue to apply our enhanced ANALYZE-ACT-ACCELERATE methodology for tackling integrated challenges. Today, our pathway-specific methodologies, from GreenClimateCities to the CitiesWithNature journey, are raising the standard for ambition.
Build Your Staff Capacity
Match your workflow to the support options of your choice
Members receive one-on-one technical support and enrollment in facilitated group training cohorts hosted annually. Our experts can check your data, review your plans, coach your staff and serve as allies to support your planning process. We also can create a custom workshop to meet your needs.
Recognize Leadership
Receive recognition for your action
We support mayors, county commissioners, council members, and other elected officials to take a bold stance on climate action. Through our Network Champions series, the ICLEI Leaders Circle, support for reporting to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, and custom communications packages, ICLEI is your leadership platform.
Local Elected Official Engagement
Collaborate at all levels
ICLEI works with mayors, county commissioners, council members and elected leaders to connect global priorities to on-the-ground action. We provide:
- Weekly Advocacy Policy Briefs outlining updates with domestic and international relevance to local governments
- Connection to the ICLEI Leaders Circle
- Facilitated dialogues between elected officials’ offices and their communities’ technical staff
Connect to a Global Network
Be part of the global movement
Our members are among 2,250 cities, towns, and regions acting on sustainability and climate around the world. Regular convenings, including international collaboration cohorts, Daring Cities and ICLEI World Congress, bring our members together to accelerate their impact.
Member Testimonials
"ICLEI has helped tremendously with San Antonio’s greenhouse gas inventories. The team consistently goes above and beyond to ensure that our staff understands the process at each step of the way, offering to write summaries, notate and keep track of changes, and attend meetings and briefings as needed. From transferring our 2016 data from CIRIS to ClearPath, to entering the raw data for 2019, and offering recommendations and best practices, the assistance that was provided to our city and community is truly invaluable."
"Every community should undertake a climate vulnerability assessment and we feel privileged to have ICLEI's support as we launch ours. The assessment will help us plan for changing future conditions. It will also help us make investments now that will ensure the resiliency of our community after we are long gone. Climate adaptation is not a choice—it is a duty!"
“It’s a huge challenge to coordinate a regional climate action plan. Each jurisdiction has different goals and priorities, and we’ve had to make a lot of adjustments throughout the process. ICLEI and SEEC have a lot of great resources. I relied a lot on the protocols and ClearPath guides."
“Our ICLEI memberships have paid dividends far greater than the modest fees required. Beyond the rich library of research and tools to advance climate action, and the networking opportunities with like-minded counterparts in other municipalities; the technical assistance and expert guidance that we received from ICLEI allowed us to leverage internal resources to develop our first GHG inventories under the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories. With our baseline inventories archived in ClearPath, we are now using it to crunch our data and identify the most impactful strategies to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions. I look forward to increasing our utilization of ICLEI’s expanding capabilities.”
“ICLEI membership provides tools for future research, data collection and planning activities. ICLEI’s resources are widely used as the standard for collecting greenhouse gas emissions data and [ClearPath is] a tool that both Clallam County and Jefferson County have used.”
"ICLEI has been a strong partner for the City of Monterey as we work to finalize our Climate Action Plan and implement a wide-ranging suite of measures at the government and community level to reduce our carbon footprint."
"ICLEI has been a vital resource to the City of Boynton Beach over the past 5 years as we continue to implement strategies from our Climate Action Plan. We have been provided with best practices, toolkits, templates, software and technical guidance through their website and friendly, knowledgeable staff. Considering the cost we would have incurred for contracting with individual consultants and vendors, our ICLEI membership remains the best return on investment for our ongoing sustainability needs."
"ICLEI's tools for collecting data helped Kirkwood move forward with projects from both environmental and economic perspectives and with bipartisan consensus. We're not just talking, we're doing! We now can show data that supports our projects, and we have research needs to take forward."
