One Planet Cities: Incentivizing sustainability action and citizen engagement for the New Urban Agenda

Delivering sustainable cities in line with the New Urban Agenda requires ambitious and inclusive local governments, and engaged and informed citizens, eager to be part of the solution. WWF's One Planet Cities programme (www.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/one_planet_cities/) addresses both audiences, through its global network of over 400 cities. This is done via the One Planet City Challenge (OPCC), which incentivizes cities to report their climate data via a friendly competition run in collaboration with ICLEI – local governments for sustainability. This session will introduce WWF's cities engagement and its collaboration with cities and multi-stakeholder partners to support cities' efforts to enhance their climate ambition, while also informing and engaging citizens through a variety of on-the-ground activities. Following an overview of how the OPCC works and its impact, three local leaders from participating OPCC cities will demonstrate how the competition has driven them to collaborate with other stakeholders, helping them raise ambition of their sustainability actions. The most recent round of the competition included a theme on sustainable mobility, encouraging cities to highlight mobility actions in their reporting. Thus presentations will highlight ambitious mobility solutions as a means to lift good examples that can inspire others to adapt to their local city contexts. Another key highlight will be how these cities have participated in the One Planet Cities' public engagement activities under the umbrella of the We Love Cities campaign (www.welovecities.org), a global social media campaign that WWF uses to generate excitement and promote greater citizen participation on sustainable cities issues. The session will round off with an interactive discussion, providing deeper insights to key opportunities and challenges raised by the panelists when driving climate action at the local level and engaging their citizens in the process.