Close to 3,400 North American municipalities endorse the Edmonton Declaration

Mayor Iveson has been leading a global effort for mayors to commit to the agreements set in the Paris Climate accord by advancing the Edmonton Declaration.

On Tuesday, June 19, at the ICLEI World Congress in Montreal, ICLEI Council and Global Executive Committee endorsed the Edmonton declaration. With that endorsement, close to 3,400 municipalities in North America have now endorsed the declaration including the US Conference of Mayors and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Annual Conference.

Created hand-in-hand with the Global Covenant of Mayors, the Edmonton Declaration is a bold call-to-action asking international mayors to show leadership on climate change, and amplify the message that rising greenhouse gas emissions severely impact cities.

Among other things, the declaration calls on all levels of government to take action on climate change to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius. It also recognizes that cities will bear much of the cost of adapting to and mitigating climate change, and that cities need better data and tools for science-based decisions when tackling climate change issues.

The Edmonton Declaration came out of the Change for Climate Global Mayors Summit, a meeting of international mayors held in Edmonton March 5, 2018. Two important agreements were made as a result of the Change for Climate Global Mayors Summit:

1. A commitment to advance the Edmonton Declaration - a call to action on climate change - for signature by global mayors.
2. The development of Innovate4Cities – a global climate action accelerator that will address critical research, technological, and city data gaps that cities experience, and that prevent cities from implementing more ambitious climate action.

Ultimately, the Edmonton Declaration will enable cities to take targeted, accelerated and ambitious climate action. Cities and city networks will be able to bring these documents to private industry, and national and subnational governments, in order to yield new research and insights, build new data, encourage technological innovations, and stimulate new funding sources for cities to combat climate change.

Edmonton is leading the charge on meeting the commitments in the declaration through changeforclimate.ca. The Change for Climate program assists residents and businesses in Edmonton achieve carbon reductions through education, industry capacity building, incentives and rebates and supporting the advancement of a transition to a low carbon economy.

For more information on the Edmonton Declaration, visit www.edmonton.ca/EdmontonDeclaration.