Sustainable Neighborhood Labs: bottom-up approaches for low-carbon, resilient, resource-efficient cities

During this side event, UN Environment will present various ways in which community/neighbourhood level action is able to influence and impact policy making and action at all levels of governance (city, national, and global).

UN Environment is advocating targeted community level action that combines vertical and horizontal policy integration to spur innovation. To maximise environmental impact interventions are focused in three areas:

1. Integrating the transition trilogy of energy efficiency, renewable energy systems and public and non-motorized transport and e-mobility

2. Prioritizing green infrastructure/nature based solutions

3. Promoting systems that make sustainable lifestyles accessible to all

UN Environment believes that interventions at the neighbourhood scale allows for the breaking down of certain complexities in integrated city planning and management. The neighbourhood scale allows interaction across stakeholders, greater community engagement, and enables participatory models that allow for feedback loops. The aim of this approach is to work towards identifying and prioritizing needs, technologies and implementation options at the neighbourhood level, while preparing the ground for scale up to city-level policy, creating policy frameworks that could then feed to the national level.