News for topic Climate-change

The city of Turku is one of the world’s leading climate cities, reaching the CDP Leadership A-list in 2019 and in 2020 and winning the European Covenant of Mayors Award for Best mid-sized Climate City in 2020. The main goal of Turku’s climate policy is a carbon neutral city area by 2029 and climate positive from there onwards and at the same time with mitigating climate change, Turku also prepares for the effects of climate change.

Valmiera – the evergreen city

By striving for excellence, Växjö has succeeded to build an international reputation for its environmental performance, starting with the BBC recognizing Växjö as the Greenest City in Europe in a broadcast in 2007. This led to a substantial international interest with hundreds of international visitor groups and report stories in international press.

The city of Kiel is committed to the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Cities and municipalities play a prominent role in the implementation of the SDGs. Our commitment to sustainability bears the motto: "For Kiel and the world: think globally, start locally". The jury honors the city of Kiel for its outstanding commitment in the areas of climate protection, resource conservation and social justice with the German Sustainability Award 2021.

The goal of the ‘6Aika: ILPO – Climate Positive Business Parks and Value Chains’ project is to help companies find new, lower-emission and carbon-binding solutions and co-operation models. One of the ways to achieve these goals is charting a climate path. The aim is to identify the emission sources and carbon sinks of the business hub, as well as means of reducing emissions.

In the meantime, despite the uncertainty brought by COVID-19, we cannot say enough how happy we are to see 23 UBC cities disclosing and staying committed to their climate change mitigation efforts. In 2020 we saw 3 newcomers (Bergen, Porvoo, Tallinn) whom we would like to congratulate joining the disclosure and climate action for the better future. The UBC cities disclosing their data in 2020 were,

In the Baltic Sea region, local and regional climate adaptation strategy development has been slower than expected and general barriers affecting climate adaptation implementation can be identified.

The monthly UBC TALKS series was launched by UBC Sustainable Cities Commission to highlight different approaches to sustainability. In January 2020, kicking-off the first webinar in the series with a talk about marine litter, we couldn't yet imagine how the relevance of online meetings would dramatically rise starting from March. As a result, UBC TALKS have become a harmonious part of the overall information-sharing trend during the pandemic.

We are proud to present UBC ASKS, an interview series consisting of interviews with people with various connections to the UBC and the Baltic Sea Region!

The disclosure period took place from 15 April to 31 July 2019 during which UBC cities were encouraged to submit their city’s climate change-related data as well as examples of actions that are being taken for climate mitigation and adaptation. A report resulted of this disclosure activity that was presented in Kaunas, Lithuania, during the UBC General Conference.

New report on UBC cities’ environmental data disclosure to CDP highlights increased interest in resilience and growing ambition in climate mitigation and adaptation among the cities.

Back in 2016, UBC and CDP agreed upon collaboration between the two organizations with the first cooperation activities taking place in spring 2017. As a result, UBC doubled the number of cities reporting to CDP from 6 to 20. This year, the number of the cities disclosing to CDP grew to 28 in despite of the busiest holiday season.