ICLEI

* This blog was written by Heba Mousa and reviewed by Tu My Tran, both from the Sustainable Mobility team at the ICLEI World Secretariat. In 2003, the World Health Organization called road crashes a neglected pandemic. Two decades later, road crashes still kill 1.16 million people every year and injure tens of millions more. But those risks are not distributed equally.

*This blog was written by Xiaoqian Zhou, with research support from Jiwon Yun, both from ICLEI East Asia Secretariat Seoul, the capital of the Republic of Korea, is a dense, fast-moving city where construction is a constant feature of the urban landscape. In a city of nearly 10 million people, construction does not happen at the margins: Building sites sit alongside homes, businesses, sidewalks and some of the city’s busiest streets.

Nine companies brought different solutions to the Kaohsiung-ICLEI City-Business Accelerator (CiBiX), showing how better data, technology, human expertise, circularity and new partnerships can help cities build more resilient urban forests. A digital platform that can map individual trees across a city. Climate models that identify where heat hits hardest and test how different interventions could help.

For the first time, a declaration from mayors and governors entered the formal record of a UNCCD COP. Beyond this milestone for cities and regions, COP17 advanced new finance for land and drought resilience and built momentum for greater coherence across the Rio Conventions.

UNEP’s new Overshoot Report, launched on 2 September 2026, confronts a difficult reality: Sustained exceedance of 1.5°C is now expected. But how high temperatures rise, how long they stay there, and how much harm becomes irreversible still depend on choices made now, making urban mitigation, adaptation, finance and multilevel governance more consequential, not less. The United Nations Environment Programme published Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return.

EN Video The Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) Constituency will host its third all-Constituency briefing of 2026, bringing together experts from across the Constituency who are leading collective advocacy on priority themes, alongside members of the Steering Committee.

On 2 September, nine companies advancing innovative approaches to urban nature came together in Kaohsiung to pitch their solutions directly to city representatives and international experts.

From Local Voices to the Global Process: The Ulaanbaatar Declaration Enters the Formal COP17 Process September 9, 2026 Posts The Governor and Mayor of Ulaanbaatar presented the outcomes of the COP17 Mayors’ Forum on behalf of local and regional governments, bringing the Ulaanbaatar Declaration into the formal intergovernmental process of UNCCD COP17 and its official proceedings.

Report by 16 September. This is a call to all cities, states and regions to report through CDP-ICLEI Track to be eligible for a 2026 CDP score, assessing if you are part of subnational climate leaders around the globe. Last year, 73 ICLEI Members achieved an A score, demonstrating leadership in transparent and ambitious climate action. Could your subnational government be celebrated next?

As climate hazards accelerate globally, so does  the need for local and regional governments to adapt to these risks. As a precursor to disaster risk management, these governments are increasingly turning to Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (CRVAs) to understand their risk profile and make informed decisions around where limited time, resources, capacity, and budgets are allocated.