Climate Energy College

It has become increasingly apparent that leaders at the local and subnational level must think outside the box in order to match the results of past performance and simultaneously adapt to accelerating changes. From the Covid-19 global pandemic to social justice issues relating to the climate crisis, decision makers are under increasing pressure to respond quickly and effectively to challenges whilst proactively mitigating against the consequences.    

This is where digitization and digital innovation enter the scene.  

Digitalization and digital innovation are transforming the current landscape of sustainability and climate action, and have the potential to create even more change in the coming years. Meaning the integration of digital technologies into everyday life to change the way all of us interact and live, digitalization should work hand in hand with sustainability and be leveraged in multiple sectors. 

What does this mean in practice? An increase in data facilitates increased precision for reporting and monitoring our current situation, and accurately predicting future trajectories so leaders can make more informed decisions at the local level. Digital innovation can also encourage behavior change via micro-rewards enabled through Blockchain technology. In addition, collecting data from communities through a bottom-up approach enhances the citizen-science interface and provides valuable information that reflects the real time functioning of a city. 

Against this backdrop, Pourya Salehi presents the impacts of digital innovation on the domain of finance. We have entered an era of exciting new funding mechanisms, which is a catalyst for mobilizing other essential resources needed for climate action. As said by the UN Secretary General, “digital technologies which are revolutionizing financial markets can be a game changer in reaching our shared objectives”. Pourya’s presentation explores citizen-centric financial systems and examines the benefits this has for both community members and local governments.  

Australia has long been a climate policy laggard among developed countries. The Morrison Coalition Government has done nothing to improve this record, as highlighted by its performance at the Glasgow COP in 2021. Indeed during the period from 2014 through to the present – under successive Coalition governments (Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison) – national climate policy has been marked first by climate policy reversals and then inaction both in terms of proclaimed ambition and policy. Meanwhile, since its loss in 2019, Labor has remained quiet on this contentious issue. And yet, paradoxically, during this period, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have continued to drop. 

Australians will go to the polls in May this year. This seminar will speculate about the possible role of climate policy in the 2022 national election campaign, and will consider possible climate policy scenarios – in the context of the ‘performance paradox’ – for the period which follows.

This event has been organised with the financial support of the European Union’s Partnership Instrument. The opinions expressed are the sole responsibility of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Taking effective action on climate change is more urgent than ever, but cities across the world are still hamstrung by limitations on their ability to efficiently look to and learn from other cities. Although tens of thousands of cities across the globe are each implementing numerous actions to tackle this critical problem, extremely little information about these activities is available in easy-to-access formats leading most practitioners to preferentially seek information from their immediate neighbours rather than pursue any kind of systematic investigations. Furthermore, due to the lack of inter-compatibility in how activities are described and measured, it is extremely challenging to perform effective analysis and other forms of investigation on what cities are doing. Although there is some effort made to consolidate city-level activities (examples including the Data Portal for Cities and the CDP Open Data Portal) these repositories do not currently provide cities with effective ways to interrogate and understand the data to inform decision-making. We have observed that this lack of direct connection to practitioners leads to a lowering of perceived value and to inadequate or infrequent submission of further data. 

This lack of sustained and robust data input from cities is an extremely critical issue with the research community as well. Poor documentation and standardization in city activity classification provides serious barriers to both learning from, and providing guidance, to municipal practitioners.

In response to this Ironbark, in conjunction with Innovate4Cities, developed a database which has been further expanded into a new tool called CityCAD. Both tools have been developed using a new approach to documenting city-level activities, with a specific focus on functionality and engagement for municipal practitioners and associated staff. This approach has been specifically developed based on the ways in which cities design their activities with the intention to connect directly into decision-making pathways. Through doing this, we have been able to identify numerous ways of providing ongoing value to practitioners as well as providing many benefits to researchers and other stakeholders. 

This seminar will review the structure and function of CityCAD focusing on how it addresses current barriers to knowledge transfer. We will also explore some of the ancillary benefits it provides, and design principles for interfacing to city practitioners to facilitate improved practice in stakeholders with a range of technical and analytical capabilities.

This event has been organised with the financial support of the European Union’s Partnership Instrument. The opinions expressed are the sole responsibility of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.