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International Roundtable on Sustainability 2018

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Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) in partnership with Swarovski will be holding the 2nd International Roundtable on Sustainability, an event designed for international luxury brand CSR managers. The initiative is one of several organized by the Sustainability Committee and the Sustainability Work Group co-ordinated by CNMI to provide a forum for discussion and training on sustainability issues in the luxury fashion industry.

The origins of the IPCC: How the world woke up to climate change

On the occasion of the IPCC’s 30th anniversary, we shine the light on the series of pivotal events in 1980-85 that alerted scientists to the urgency of addressing climate change, kicking politicians into action, and ultimately leading to the birth of the world’s climate science assessment body.

All of a sudden we were seeing a problem that people had thought was going to be a hundred years away coming within the next generation.

In 1985, Jill Jäger, an environmental scientist, attended a meeting in a small town in the Austrian Alps. The meeting, chaired by a meteorologist named Bert Bolin, was a small gathering of climate scientists intending to discuss the results of one of the first international assessments of the potential for human-induced climate change. Speaking to the BBC in 2014, Jäger remembers how she left the event with a feeling that “something big is happening […] the big adventure here was bringing all the pieces together and get this complete picture and we can see that the changes are coming much faster.”

The 1985 Villach meeting was the culmination of a process in which three international organizations – ICSU, UNEP and WMO – joined forces to bring an issue onto the international policy agenda that to that day had been confined to the pages of scientific journals and within the walls of conference rooms: the threat of anthropogenic climate change. The meeting turned out to be the spark that lit the fire that awakened the world’s governments, ultimately leading to the creation of the IPCC in 1988.

[video:https://vimeo.com/256508455]

Connect4Climate celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the IPCC with #All4TheGreen: Mobilizing Climate Science

This is the little-known story of scientists coming together to pool their knowledge on an issue that most had been studying as a phenomenon within their own discipline. When they did, they realized that what was on the horizon was so big, it needed the urgent attention of policymakers – and a collaboration between the policy and science communities that had never been attempted.

Origins: Discovering the first clues to climate change

The first hints at the possible effects of man-made CO₂ emissions by scientists – including that it could lead to a greenhouse effect – go back to the 19th century. But it was only in the second half of the 20th century that the scientific community really got interested. A key moment in building scientific knowledge was the International Geophysical Year (IGY) organized by ICSU in 1957. The IGY was a landmark international effort to better understand the Earth system – unprecedented in scope and international remit, with almost 70 countries participating. One of the scientists who received funding for their projects as part of this year was a young American scientist, Charles D. Keeling. He established the first permanent measurement of CO₂ levels in the atmosphere from a research base on Mauna Loa, Hawaii. His measurements are being continued to this day, and have become known as the Keeling curve – showing an unrelenting increase in atmospheric CO₂ levels ever since.

At the time, the International Geophysical Year had such an impact on popular culture that Donald Fagen wrote a song about it.

In 1967, ICSU and WMO launched a global programme to better understand the behaviour of the atmosphere and the physical basis of climate. The aim of the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) was to improve the models used for weather forecasting, but eventually it would be drawn into the climate issue. In 1967, a study had noted that a doubling of the CO₂ content of the atmosphere would lead to an increase in global mean temperature of 2°C. In the next decade, other researchers found that there had already been an increase of mean temperature in the Northern hemisphere in the first decades of the twentieth century. The open question at the time was whether this was a natural variation or a human-induced change. This spurred interest in climate change in, for example, the ecology and geology communities. In 1980, ICSU and WMO decided to transform the GARP programme into an forum for international cooperation in climate research. GARP became the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), still making important contributions to modern climate science.

There was, however, still very little effort to synthesize available knowledge about the climate change phenomenon. An initial assessment was prepared by the US National Academy of Science in 1977, aimed at a scientific audience. In 1979, WMO and UNEP organized a first Word Climate Conference. However, the conference focused almost exclusively on the physical basis of climate change. It was lacking in contributions from other disciplines and, apart from a call for more resources for climate research, did not make any attempts to reach out of the academic circles and create awareness of the issue.

Villach I: Gathering the pieces of the puzzle

Shortly thereafter, however, ICSU, UNEP and WMO decided it was time for change. They called for a different meeting. It was time for scientists to step outside of the silos of their individual disciplines. It was time to bring the knowledge gathered by national studies together. In October 1980, they called the elite of global climate science to Villach to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. The meeting was an intimate, international gathering of top-level scientists studying climate change phenomena, bringing together physicists, chemists, meteorologists, geographers, and other disciplines.

Peter Liss, a chemical oceanographer, attended the meeting. He remembers that “Villach 1980 was a seminal meeting. This is when the scientists convinced themselves that this was serious. The models were telling us that it was going to happen.” He recalls that this was the first time that scientists from different disciplines brought together the state of knowledge within their field to paint a bigger picture. “People were working on a lot of different aspects at the time, but this brought it all together showing that this was a big, global problem,” he says. They worked out a statement that warned that “the probability that these potentially serious impacts may be realized is sufficiently great” to justify a concerted effort to improve the understanding of the changes underway was needed and that “it is essential that the research proposed here be undertaken as a matter of urgency.”

Report of the 1980 Villach meeting

However, at the time, the outcomes of the meeting were not widely circulated. In his semi-autobiographical account of the creation of the IPCC, Bert Bolin, who chaired the meeting, describes how on the train ride home from that conference, he and other participants discussed that something bigger was needed. Bolin says he was of the clear view that “an analysis that was wider in scope, greater in depth and more international was most desirable.”

Villach 1985: A call to policy-makers

That analysis was initiated by UNEP shortly after the conference. It became the report “The assessment of the role of carbon dioxide and of other greenhouse gases in climate variations and associated impacts”. In 1985, a second Villach conference, again organized by ICSU, UNEP and WMO, met to discuss the results of the study. It became clear that the combined effect of all greenhouse gases could mean the equivalent of a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations might be on the horizon before the middle of the 21st century. Climate change was becoming a much more urgent issue than previously thought.

The scientists concluded that current convictions guiding investments and social decisions that were based on the climate system remaining stable were “no longer a good assumption,” because greenhouse gases were expected to cause a warming of global temperatures “which is greater than any in man’s history.” For the first time, they called for a collaboration between scientists and policymakers, stating that the two groups “should begin active collaboration to explore the effectiveness of alternative policies and adjustments.”

Bert Bolin in an undated photograph. Photo: The Royal Swedish Academy of Science (KVA)

The 1985 Villach conference recommended that a task force should further study the issue, and ICSU, WMO and UNEP formed the “Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG)”, with two members nominated by each organization. The group was more aimed towards informing the leadership of the three organizations, rather than engage with policy-makers. Its limitations were soon becoming obvious.

The ozone layer, droughts and a media moment

By then, however, political momentum had picked up. Possibly seeing an opportunity following the process that led to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, UNEP Executive Director Mostafa Tolba pushed for an international convention on climate change. In Toronto, the “International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security” issued a stark warning: human impact on the planet was leading to a multitude of environmental changes ranging from depletion of the ozone layer to global warming and sea level rise, and was “likely to cause severe economic and social dislocation.” An unusually hot summer in the USA led to worries about food security, bringing the issue into public discussions. In part due to support from parts of the influential U.S. administration, planning soon was underway for an intergovernmental science-policy mechanism that was to create regular assessments of the state of science on climate change, its impacts and potential response strategies.

Both the political and the scientific community now agreed that action was needed. All of a sudden, there was a perfect storm. The fact that there was an increasing body of knowledge that needed to be assessed, that governments were starting to see the need for such an assessment, and the convening efforts of the WMO and UNEP. The scientists involved in the Villach meetings, on the other hand, felt that, now that they had succeeded in bringing the issue to the political agenda, it was appropriate to maintain the independence of research. Scientific work should be performed independently of any government.

That is why ICSU at the time concentrated on rallying the scientific community around the big research questions in climate change, global ecology and biogeochemistry. It founded the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in 1986, which became a major supplier of knowledge to the IPCC assessments. In 2014, the IGBP merged with two other ICSU-sponsored environmental research programmes (the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and DIVERSITAS), to form Future Earth, which is now working to supply the scientific basis for a sustainable future. WCRP continues its contributions to the analysis and prediction of climate change as part of Earth system change.

The intergovernmental nature of the new assessment body, on the other hand, made it a natural fit within the remit of WMO and UNEP, both intergovernmental organizations. They went on to form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, whose anniversary we are celebrating this week. Happy Birthday, IPCC!

Originally posted by the International Council for Science

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First session of the IPCC in 1988. Photo Credit: IPCC

4 Reasons for countries to enhance their NDCs by 2020

The Paris Agreement was widely hailed for drawing all nations together to tackle climate change, based on bottom-up contributions that will be reviewed and strengthened over time. These contributions are aimed at achieving the ambitious but necessary long-term goals of limiting global temperature increase and building resilience to climate impacts. This process is known as the ambition mechanism, and the first test of whether and how it will work is fast approaching. In 2018, Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will come together to take stock of progress and identify where they can go further, faster to put the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach.

We Need to Go Further, Faster, Together for Climate Action - COP23 slogan. Photo Credit: Max Thabiso Edkins / Connect4Climate

Following this process, known as the Talanoa Dialogue, Parties will have the opportunity to communicate new or updated climate commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, by 2020.

So why should countries communicate new or updated NDCs by 2020?

1) Current NDCs Need to Be Strengthened to Achieve the Goals of the Paris Agreement

At the 2015 climate summit in Paris, countries agreed to limit warming to well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). The current NDCs, by contrast, would lead to warming in the range of 2.7 to 3.7 degrees C; there remains a significant gap between emissions expected in 2030 and emissions compatible with the Paris goals. The longer countries wait to bring their commitments into line with the Paris goals, the more difficult it will be and the steeper the rate at which emissions will need to decline. Because fossil-fueled power plants and inefficient buildings have long life spans, achieving an ever-steeper reduction rate can become expensive and technically difficult. The sooner NDCs reflect the necessary ambition to achieve the Paris goals, the sooner they can signal to redirect investments away from high-emitting technologies.

2) Parties Can Seize Economic and Social Benefits of Updating their NDCs

The current NDCs were developed by Parties ahead of Paris, quickly and with no certainty of the final outcome. With the Paris Agreement now in force and with implementation guidelines to be finalized at the end of 2018, Parties can factor in recent innovations and declining costs of renewable energy to take advantage of opportunities in key sectors to send accurate signals to investors. Many countries have long-term plans and strategies related to climate, development, and economic objectives. Taking the opportunity now to align NDCs with these long-term goals and strategies will avoid locking in high emissions that will exacerbate climate vulnerabilities. For example, analysis has revealed the high potential for synergies between achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the NDCs.

The next years could offer new areas of cost-effective climate action. Lastly, many countries have already made substantial progress and some appear to be on track to exceed the targets in their current NDCs.

3) It Provides an Opportunity to Engage Stakeholders and Create Support for Climate Action

Enhancing NDCs provides an opportunity to rally support for climate action, strengthen public participation and ensure that relevant stakeholders help to create a strategic vision. The opportunity to review and update the NDCs by 2020 enables Parties to learn from their initial experience and identify ways to engage a broader range of stakeholders to access new information and enhance ownership of the NDC, within and outside government. Enhancing engagement with businesses and other non-state actors, as well as subnational governments, could also reveal additional mitigation potential or innovations that help drive enhanced ambition.

4) This Can Send Powerful Signals to Decision-Makers

NDCs send powerful signals to inform decision-making by a wide range of actors, not only to the international community, but also domestically. Ensuring the targets, actions and measures in an NDC reflect the latest thinking, sectoral opportunities and potential of a country is important to spur policy development, innovation in research and development, and ensure public and private investment is channeled appropriately and in line with national objectives.

Updating NDCs by 2020 will also kick-start the virtuous cycle of ambition at the heart of the Paris Agreement, inducing greater ambition from other Parties thereby leveling the playing field in a globalized economy.

Ambition Mechanism in the Paris Agreement, World Resources Institute

To help countries identify promising avenues to bring their NDCs into line with the Paris Agreement by 2020, we have developed a menu of options for NDC enhancement.

The options cover ways to enhance mitigation ambition and strengthen NDC content on adaptation and implementation and to improve the clarity and transparency with which NDCs are communicated. These options are not mutually exclusive. In many cases, it will be feasible and desirable for a country to strengthen mitigation ambition as well as other facets of their NDC by pursuing multiple options at once.

Menu of Options for Enhancing Nationnally Determined Contributions, World Resources Institute

The year 2020 will serve as a critical test of the ability of the Paris Agreement to deliver enhanced ambition over time until our collective goals are reached. Countries can do their part by exploring and enacting meaningful options to enhance their NDCs as soon as possible.

This blog post was originally published on Insights, World Resources Institute

Banner and thumbnail photos credit to Max Thabiso Edkins / Connect4Climate

VHacks - Hackathon at the Vatican to overcome social barriers and embrace common values

Computer enthusiasts were at the Vatican from March 8 to 11 to participate in the VHacks - Hackathon at the Vatican.

The 120 participants from all religious and cultural backgrounds, from 57 universities and five continents, were chosen “based on academic accomplishments, innovative thinking, and alignment with our mission statement,” organizers said. The Secretariat for Communication of the Holy See, and the OPTIC Foundation, chaired by Father Eric Salobir, organized the event.

Photo Credit: Massimiliano Falcone / Connect4Climate

The competition took place over 36 hours and focused on problems of social inclusion, interfaith dialogue, and the migrant and refugee crisis.

Conflicts, migrations, scarcity of resources caused by climate change were the main threats to humanity that the participants were called to fight. Connect4Climate joined the friendly competition, designed to set innovators to work in thinking of ways to solve social problems, through proposals and useful applications for the mission of the Church.

Photo Credit: Massimiliano Falcone / Connect4Climate

The Church has always embraced innovation - after the Digital Revolution, the Holy See is starting to adopt new technologies to help the humankind.

Fashion: Part of the problem, therefore of the solution

The global fashion industry came to COP23 to tell of its efforts to cut out the waste and greenhouse gas emissions in its production, supply and customer behavior which have played a significant part in the linked problems of climate change and sustainability.

Watch how the fashion industry supports the Paris Agreement

The event at this year’s UN Climate Change Conference left the human models at home to shine a spotlight instead on business models and environmentally sound practices that can ensure the transition towards a cleaner, sustainable future, including making fibers from orange juice production.

The fashion sector represents an annual global turnover of around 160 billion euros. It produces 60 million tonnes of garments a year, which could reach 100 million by 2030, and employs 60 million people around the world, mainly in developing countries.

Fashion event COP23 Enrica Arena, Orange Fiber

Photo Credit: UNFCCC

Moderating the event, Costa Rican fashion designer Mitchell de La O outlined efforts to design and promote a new low carbon and sustainable system for fashion production and consumption.

Brands are adopting various climate and sustainability approaches, including by measuring their climate impact and looking beyond the first tier of suppliers, integrating sustainability in core business practices, making efforts to bring transparency to the supply chain and applying a variety of innovative solutions.

Mitchell de La O, Costa Rican fashion designer

Swedish brand Filippa K’s sustainability expert Elin Larsson shared insights on how resource intensive garment making is. The production of 1 kilo of cotton requires 3,000 liters of water and 1 kilo of chemicals, creating 16 kilos of CO2 and half a kilo of waste. In Sweden, on average each person throws away 13 kilos of garments a year, of which 8 kilos ends up as waste – yet at least 60% could be reusable.

Vanessa Rothschild, the Sustainability Expert at the H&M Group, said the group’s strategy was to be 100% run on renewable energy by 2040 with an entirely circular production model, where the by-product of one industry serves the objective of another.

The panelists also discussed how industry players are developing and adopting new tools to lower the carbon footprint of the industry. For example, Filippa K has created a way to classify fiber for weaving according to a set sustainability degree (its biological/organic source, ability to be repaired and recycled or even being of a recycled nature already).

Orange Fiber’s innovation, developed in partnership with the Polytechnic University of Milan, uses by-products from citrus juice production to produce a sustainable textile. Enrica Arena, one of the two original entrepreneurs, works at the end of orange juice production to retrieve the waste of the chain, and extract from it the cellulose that helps to create the necessary textile fiber.

Filippa K said it was also essential to involve customers in campaigns. For example, Elin Larsson presented the “7 pieces is all you need” campaign, where 18 different looks were created from the same seven pieces to prevent over-consumption of their products.

Another campaign is to tell people there is no need to over-wash clothes, which quickly breaks down the fibers, as well as to remind them that clothes can be mended, instead of thrown away.

Banner and thumbnail photo credit to UNFCCC

The Sustainable Energy for All Forum 2018

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Leaders from government, business, civil society and international organizations will gather 2-3 May 2018 at the Convento do Beato in Lisbon, Portugal for the fourth Sustainable Energy for All Forum.

Voices for a Brighter Future Competition: Calling all journalists from the least developed countries

The United Nations Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS) is looking for inspiring stories on how sustainable energy positively impacts communities and individuals in the world’s Least Developed Countries.

Apply for the competition

Three winners of the ‘Voices of A Brighter Future’ competition will have their work featured by the United Nations and other news outlets, with travel and expenses covered to report from the Sustainable Energy for All Forum in Lisbon, Portugal 2-3 May 2018.

Photo Credit: Kaia Rose / Connect4Climate

Entries will be judged by a high-level panel from the United Nations, sustainable energy, and the media sector. Submissions must have been published or broadcast between 16 August 2017 and 16 March 2018. Please read the guidelines for submissions in full.

Please note this competition is only open for journalists who are nationals from Least Developed Countries. A full list of these countries is available here.

This competition has been made possible with the generous financial support of the Government of Norway.

Take a look at the Terms and Conditions of the competition

World’s First International Research Conference on Carbon Pricing Set for January 2019

The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), an initiative that brings together leaders from government, business, and civil society to drive carbon pricing action around the world, has just announced the launch of the first CPLC Research Conference on carbon pricing to take place in late January 2019.

Abstracts of 150 words are due by April 15th, 2018, and should be submitted using the form on this website.

Over the past several years, the world has seen a proliferation of carbon pricing schemes and an increase in the diversity of approaches. Research has underpinned much of this progress and helped increase the understanding of carbon pricing design. Despite this growing body of experience and data, new research and analysis are needed to support effective carbon pricing design and execution.

The CPLC will convene researchers, policymakers, and practitioners at this international research conference to strengthen the knowledge base on carbon pricing and foster an improved understanding of the evolving challenges to its successful application.

[video:https://vimeo.com/259720710]

Leveraging its high-level members of governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations, the Coalition will draw on outcomes of this conference to help bridge the existing gap between theory and practice and to inform future decisions taken by policymakers and corporate leaders.

We want to have a real, evidence-based conversation between practitioners, academia, policymakers, business leaders, and other sectors of society to provide answers to the difficult questions that all of them are asking around carbon pricing.

Andrei Marcu, Co-Chair of the conference and its scientific committee, and Senior Fellow International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and Director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition.

We are looking to hear about interesting projects and outputs from across a wide spectrum of disciplines going beyond the usual fields already working on carbon pricing. For example, we would like to hear from researchers on corporate strategy or others working on the relevance of carbon pricing for business and the financial sector. We are particularly interested in a strong turnout from developing countries as well as from a younger generation of researchers and practitioners.

Michael Mehling, Co-Chair of the conference and its scientific committee, and Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Relevant research themes include, but are not limited to, the following:

Learning from past and current experience: Case studies on carbon pricing design and implementation, performance review, and evaluation, comparing carbon pricing systems and their effects, understanding actors and affected markets, results of modeling to assess/analyzeenvironmental, macroeconomic, and distributional outcomes of different approaches, etc.;

The political economy of carbon pricing: Political acceptance and feasibility of carbon pricing, use of carbon pricing revenue, distributional effects of carbon pricing, dealing with adverse impacts of carbon pricing, etc.;

Carbon pricing and development: Financing sustainable development with carbon pricing, fiscal aspects of carbon pricing, co-benefits of carbon pricing (indirect effects on pollution, employment implications, economic diversification), pathways to a just transition, etc.;

Carbon pricing and competitiveness: Understanding impacts of carbon pricing on competitiveness, effects, and limitations of policy options to address leakage and competitiveness concerns (free allocation, tax exemptions, alternative approaches), etc.;

Role of carbon pricing in decarbonization: Complementary policies and policy interactions, hybrid approaches to carbon pricing, dynamic effects and climate policy ambition, role of carbon pricing in innovation and energy transition, internal carbon pricing, etc.;

Emerging frontiers of carbon pricing: Linkage and convergence of carbon pricing systems, policy transfer, and diffusion across jurisdictions, extending carbon pricing to new sectors (aviation, shipping, agriculture and forestry), carbon pricing under the Paris Agreement (e.g. operationalization of Art. 6 and NDC (Partnership) support), etc.

All submissions will undergo review and selection by a Scientific Committee, with eminent representatives of academia, government, and the private sector.

Selection decisions will be communicated by May 31st, 2018, and full papers for conference presentation will be due by October 31st, 2018.

Conference proceedings will be published in an edited volume and/or a high-impact, peer-reviewed journal.

The CPLC Research Conference Scientific Committee is composed of:

Co-Chairs:

Andrei Marcu, Senior Fellow, ICTSD

Michael Mehling, Deputy Director CEEPR, MIT

Scientific Committee:

William Acworth, Project Manager, ICAP

Susanne Åkerfeldt, Senior Legal Adviser, Swedish Ministry of Finance

Ottmar Edenhofer, Deputy Director and Chief Economist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Arnibhan Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer, Mahindra

Sharlin Hemraj, Senior Economist, National Treasury, South Africa

Rachael Jonassen, Director - Greenhouse Gas Management Program, George Washington University

Emilio Lebre la Rovere, Professor, Energy Planning Program, Federal Univesity of Rio

Duan Maosheng, Professor and Director China Carbon Market Center, Tshingua University, China

Andrei Marcu, Senior Fellow, ICTSD

Michael Mehling, Deputy Director CEEPR, MIT

Adele Morris, Senior Fellow, Economic Studies | Policy Director - Climate and Energy Economics Project, The Brookings Institute

Gzregorz Peszko, Lead Economist, World Bank

Mandy Rambharos, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Manager, ESKOM

Youba Sokona, Special Advisor, The South Center

Rob Stavins, Professor, Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School

2018 Momentum for Change Awards: Call for Applications

The United Nations Climate Change secretariat has opened the call for applications for its 2018 Momentum for Change Awards to showcase global climate action and ambition, as national governments work toward implementing the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Applications are being accepted from 22 February until 30 April 2018. Individuals, organizations, communities, schools, cities, businesses, industries, governments and others that are taking concrete action on climate change can apply to have their projects recognized here.

Initiatives that are selected for the Momentum for Change Awards are called ‘Lighthouse Activities.’ They are the most innovative, scalable, and replicable examples of what people are doing to address climate change, in the hope of inspiring others to act. Winning activities will be recognized and celebrated during a series of special events at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 24) in Katowice, Poland, taking place in December.

Momentum for Change 2018 Awards Call for Applications

Momentum for Change is looking for climate action projects that are already achieving real results in the following four categories:

1. Women for Results: recognizing the critical leadership and participation of women in addressing climate change, implemented in collaboration with Masdar’s WiSER initiative.

2. Financing for Climate Friendly Investment: recognizing successful financial innovations for adaptation and climate mitigation, implemented in partnership with the World Economic Forum Global Project on Climate Change.

3. Planetary Health: recognizing novel solutions that balance the need for both human health and a healthy planet, implemented with support by The Rockefeller Foundation.

4. Climate Neutral Now: recognizing efforts by individuals, companies, and governments that are achieving real results in transitioning to climate neutrality, implemented with the secretariat’s Climate Neutral Now initiative.

For more details and to apply, please click here.

University of Chicago & Karnataka Government launch Bengaluru Innovation Challenge

The University of Chicago and the Urban Development Department of the Government of Karnataka launched the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge—an effort to improve air and water quality by crowdsourcing inventive ideas from citizens, civic leaders, academics, corporations, and other institutions across India.

The Challenge winners will receive funding support of up to Rs. 1.5 crore over two years to implement and test their ideas in the field, with guidance and input from the Government of Karnataka and leading faculty at the University of Chicago. If successful, these ideas could become policy solutions the government could implement on a large scale and may provide a valuable model for other cities to follow.

Launching the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge, Shri. K.J. George, Hon’ble Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning, said, “Bengaluru is the engine of growth of Karnataka, and I am glad to announce this competition here. This Challenge collects ideas from the community, from the people who live and work here and know this city and its problems best and I think that’s a very interesting way of looking for solutions.”

Shri. KJ George, Hon'ble Minister for Bengaluru Development & Town Planning gave the opening remarks at the launch of the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge. Photo Credits: Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, India - EPIC-India

The Challenge is a project of the Tata Centre for Development (TCD) at UChicago and the Urban Development Department of the Government of Karnataka, in partnership with the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago’s India team (EPIC-India) and UChicago Energy and Environment Lab.

“The answers to the problems that modern cities face today are often found hidden by those with unique on-the-ground knowledge,” says Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and director of EPIC and TCD. “This challenge presents a fantastic opportunity not just for the government and University of Chicago, but for students, researchers and innovative thinkers across India to share their novel ideas for solving the real energy and environmental problems of Bengaluru.”

The challenge, which is now receiving letters of interest, will screen applications over the next six months before announcing the winners in the fall of 2018.

Shri.KJ George Hon’ble Minister for Bengaluru Development & Town Planning and Ms. Aditi Mody, Executive Director, University of Chicago Trust after the signing of MoU that marked the launch of the Bengaluru Innovation Challenge. Photo Credits: University of Chicago, India - EPIC-India

“We’re excited to be partnering with the Karnataka government on this ground-breaking approach to identifying, refining, testing and scaling up new policy solutions proven to work,” says Anna Agarwal, Associate Director, Urban Innovation, UChicago Energy & Environment Lab. “Testing the ideas in advance ensures not only that the policy is designed to be successful, but also that it can be effectively scaled up and implemented.”

The Bengaluru Innovation Challenge builds on an earlier challenge that took place in Delhi in 2015-16 in partnership with the Delhi government. In that challenge, three winners were chosen from nearly 250 ideas from citizens, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, non-profit and for-profit organizations from across India and around the world.

Banner and thumbnail photo credits to University of Chicago