Circular
5/2023
Barcelona, 2 March 2023
To the members of the World Council
To the Secretaries General
To the Vice-Presidents of United Cities and Local Governments
To the Chairs of UCLG Committees, Working Groups, Communities of Practice and Fora
For information: To the Presidency
Bankable Cities Climate Project & Cities Meet Cities Expert Exchange Program
Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM)
Dear members,
UCLG is part of the alliance of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) and a member its Strategic Advisory Committee. As such, please allow us to share with you two up-dates on initiatives of financial and technical assistance recently developed and which are open to applications under the lead of the GCoM Secretariat:
- Bankable Cities’ Climate Projects
An EU-funded service has been launched to offer technical support for 10-15 cities’ climate projects in their early stage. The technical assistance can cover the following areas of intervention: (a) Scoping, through data collection and project definition, (b) Pre-feasibility studies for bundling, sources of finance and business models, and (c) Structuring with financial or economic analyses and instrument selection. Selected municipalities will receive tailor-made technical guidance from a dedicated expert during 4 months, until the end of 2023, to help consolidate bankable projects.
Interested applicants should fill in the form for the Bankable Cities’ Climate Projects to present their motivation and project and submit their application until 17 April 2023 to the GCoM Secretariat at projects@globalcovenantofmayors.eu. Short-listed projects will be invited by the GCoM Secretariat to an interview in May and the final selection of cities will be shared in June 2023.
Please find below some of the notable criteria to consider before applying:
- Lead applicants must be cities/municipalities or groupings of local authorities such as unions or associations;
- Applicant authorities should count between 100 000 to 1.5 million inhabitants;
- Applicants must be from the following Regional/National Covenants: South Asia, East Asia; Southeast Asia; Eastern Europe & Central Asia, including the Balkans, Latin America & the Caribbean, Middle East & North Africa, including Türkiye;
- Applicants must be GCoM signatory cities;
- Applicants must have formulated a Climate Action Plan;
- Projects can be a single project or bundled project;
- Projects should have a minimum estimated size of 1 million euros;
- Projects must include infrastructure realization with climate impact or scope.
We invite you to visit the following website for more information on the Bankable Cities’ Climate Project.
- Cities Meet Cities - Experts Exchange Program
The new “Expert Exchange Program” aims to facilitate city-to-city cooperation on climate project implementation. Cities from different world regions will be paired up, to share experiences, best practices and learn from each other on the barriers, ideas and solutions to carry out projects that are part of their Climate Action Plans. Selected cities will benefit from the organizational and financial support for two city officials to assist to two visits (one in each city) dedicated to exchange. The visits will take place between January 2023 and March 2024 for a duration of 3 to 5-days.
In order to answer the call, applicants should fill in the form for the Experts Exchange Program and submit their application until 8 March 2023 to the GCoM Secretariat at experts.exchange@globalcovenantofmayors.eu. The selection process of the 20 beneficiary cities (10 pairs of cities formed according to common themes of interest) will be led by the GCoM Secretariat in coordination with the Regional/National Covenants.
Relevant criteria for applicants:
- Applicants must be GCoM signatory cities;
- Applicants must have formulated a Climate Action Plan or be in the process of finalizing one;
- Applicants must commit to dedicate the human resources and time to advance on the implementation of their Climate Action through close exchanges with the city they have been paired with until the program’s end in September 2024.
You may visit the following website for more information on the GCoM Experts Exchange Program.
We invite UCLG members to apply to the above initiatives and contact us at ecotransition@uclg.org and localfinances@uclg.org for any further questions or clarification.
Sincerely,
The UCLG World Secretariat