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GCoM South East Asia Coordination Meeting

The IUC Asia Helpdesk,  representing Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM) Secretariat for Southeast Asia (SEA), organized a coordination meeting for the GCoM partners in the SEA region on 31 August. The event was attended by 17  participants representing the GCoM partners from UCLG ASPAC, CDP, C40, CityNet, UN-Habitat, the GCoM Global Secretariat as well as the IUC Asia project. The meeting provided an opportunity for partners to share their latest relevant activities and challenges, as well as strengthens the cooperation among partners and explore the area for collaboration.

Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi serves as Secretary-General of UCLG ASPAC, shared the recent assignment on the Global-Regional coordination mechanism developed by ICLEI-UCLG-GCoM. Specifically, the collaborative works between UCLG ASPAC and ICLEI would cover the Asia Pacific region, which includes enhancing regional support to leverage engagement with cities as well as supporting coordination between Regional Covenants and Global Secretariat. Under the UCLG ASPAC program,  Asih Budiati provided the upcoming agenda of Climate Resilient and Inclusive Cities (CRIC) project, particularly the public consultation of the urban analysis scheduled in the second week of September, and encouraged partners to participate in providing valuable feedback.  She added the plan to organize the workshop of sustainable and resilient cities in January 2020 and sought any collaboration with other partners.

Hanah Paik from CDP informed the participants about the extension for the submission deadline of CDP reporting and the flexibility of the GCoM reporting process due to the COVID-19 outbreak. At the moment, CDP received over 500 submissions globally and was going through all the data and provide the feedback by the end of the year. Additional communication was planned to GCoM committed cities, in which the cities can submit additional data until the end of the year based on the feedback they received for the badging validation checks. Regarding the IUC project, she reported that updates from Malaysian pilot cities. They were very close to finalizing GHG inventories and Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) and would focus on supporting other cities to submit data for the end-of-year analysis.  The last sharing was about the newly-launch report on the co-benefit of climate action, among other things, presented Seberang Perai as one of GCoM Malaysian cities. The report looked at the additional benefit that climate action delivers and how Seberang Perai can utilize these in their decision-making process.

Laid Cea from UN Habitat expressed the work of the CAP developments in the three Vietnamese pilot cities of the IUC project, which has been slowed down due to COVID-19. The partnership with the Ministry of Environment has been established, particularly the Department of Climate Change, initiating the sharing of experiences in Vietnam as preparatory work for GCoM in the country.   Apart from Vietnam, she also updated the collaboration work with headquarters and GCoM Global Secretariat in assisting five cities of the Philippines to be part of GCoM membership. She added that a virtual conference scheduled in September to invite all GCoM cities across the country, in collaboration with the Climate Change Commission of the Philippines. The conference would discuss the status and difficulties for the CAP development; thus, in the end, the cites were expected to report the local climate action as part of GCoM initiatives and national programs. The current support from ICLEI SEA and C40 were appreciated to strengthen the commitment at the country level.

Megan and Kevin Drouin of Citynet provided the plans to host the climate leadership webinar on carbon finance for the city level.  She invited meeting participants to join and asked to spread the news through their networks.

Dini Laraswati of IUC Asia Helpdesk provided the updates of CAP development from Indonesian cities, were approaching the final stage. Currently finalizing the GHG data inventory and CRVA, and close to target setting and final determination of priority actions. Raul Daussa added the latest update of on-going work with pilot cities for the application preparation of the GCoM Gap Fund.  He also highlighted the schedule of the final workshop for three respective IUC pilot countries in November and would update later with the partners with the detailed agenda.

Elise and Benjamin of the GCoM Global Secretariat shared the upcoming call on the energy pillar scheduled on 08 September. The consultation has been opened until 25 September through the GCoM Regions Portal to seek any feedback, e.g., best practices or practical guidelines from the regions. Regarding the GCoM Gap Fund, the team was currently following up with the different partners, particularly on the requirements criteria and the series communication materials for the upcoming launch call, which likely to happen between September and October. The secretariat encouraged the partners to figure out the replacement of the current GCoM SEA Board Representation, Mayor Risma of Surabaya, as her term is coming to an end in early 2021.

Alexandra Lehmann from the EU Delegation provided the work with the IUC project for two selected Malaysian cities on the circular economy. Although it was not linked with the GCoM work, this can set an example for exchanging capacity between European cities and Malaysian cities. Further feedback was given for the CRIC project to make sure there was no overlap of initiatives among SEA cities and that the lesson-learned is disseminated well for future projects.

IUC Asia Helpdesk closed the meeting with the follow-up actions to update the mapping activities of GCoM partners in the region.

 

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