Calendar

Tuesday, 21 June 2022 09:00 – 11:00 CEST | 15:00 – 17:00 MYT | 16:00 – 18:00 JST

Check your local time here.

In our first thematic webinar Circular City Hubs: Improving Thriving, Liveable, Resilient Urban Centres on 14 December 2021,  participating IURC cities identified cities as centres for innovation hubs. The outcome of the webinar resulted in 13 IURC cities from 9 countries (Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Finland, New Zealand, Portugal) completing a circular economy cluster spreadsheet for an inclusive stock take. The top three waste streams identified were food waste in 5 cities, waste water treatment in 4 cities and plastic circularity in 3 cities which is connected to food waste.

Today’s thematic webinar will focus on Southeast Asia cities’ circular food waste community hubs a key locus of circular change to grow Circular Neighbourhoods. Cities from Italy, Portugal, Japan and Malaysia will present the critical activities and deliverables needed to implement and replicate pilot model cities leading in this critical transformation with their communities and F&B outlets under the theme of “Circular Neighbourhoods”.

Download the full programme

Read the highlights, watch the video and download the presentations here.

BACKGROUND

Both the EU and China are facing three major challenges in the agricultural sector. First, food security challenge: the EU is part of the global food system, whereas China has a daunting task to feed 22% of the world’s population with 9% of the world’s arable land. Second, environmental challenges such as soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss and climate change. And third, high degree of urbanization: 75% of the Europe population lives in cities in and 64% in China, a proportion that is projected to 80% by 2050. These are some reasons why urban agriculture has become a subject of growing interest and a burgeoning sector. Despite the growing awareness worldwide of the potential of urban agriculture, it has yet to fully find its way into policy and practice in both the EU and China.

In Europe, the “Europe 2020” strategy laid the groundwork for smarter, more sustainable and inclusive growth. Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) focuses on classical agricultural production in rural areas, but also includes implicit chances for urban agriculture, including the development of short supply chains and local markets or the promotion of cooperation activities. The Green Deal with its Farm-to-Fork-Strategy aims to create sustainable food systems stressing the creation of a robust and resilient food system. In China, policy recommendations put urban-rural integrated development and rural revitalization forward, which implies the potential of urban agriculture in solving the issues of urban-rural discrepancy, e.g. the National Sustainable Agriculture Development Plan (2015-2030) which highlights the environmental challenges in the agricultural sector and promotes locally adapted agriculture and circular agriculture. The shorter-term „National Agriculture Green Development Plan“ (2021-2025) or the cross-cutting “14th Five-Year Plan for Circular Economy Development” (2021-2025) are just other examples of the promotion of a more sustainable, resource-efficient agriculture.

The webinar is organised as a part of the IURC China thematic cluster working sessions, aiming to share how cities and regions achieve transition towards green, circular and bio-economy and resilient agri-food systems, and discuss how EU-China cooperation can help them to reach the goals.

OBJECTIVES

Through deep multilateral discussion, this thematic webinar seeks to showcase challenges and solutions of developing robust and resilient agri-food systems, enhancing green, circular and bioeconomy in IURC pilot cities & regions and provide them with a networking opportunity to:

1. Share perspectives, policy initiatives, and best practices

2. Identify potential common projects and relevant stakeholders to address the transition to a green and circular economy.

Participants

This webinar will take place among：

1. stakeholders from IURC China pilot cities and regions in the thematic group of Sustainable urban agriculture and Agri-food systems;

2. invited participants from IURC global community.

REGISTER

AGENDA

Read the highlights from the event

The webinar took place on 23 June 2022.

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–> Watch the recording here

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–> Agenda here 

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–> More information: aamerico@iurc.eu

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Takeaways

Transport is one of the Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy – Europe key sectors, representing the 14.5% of actions submitted by Covenant signatories (Covenant in figures) and the 26% of the total emissions in the BEI (JRC, Covenant of Mayors 2019 Assessment). This is why the Covenant of Mayors is working with a wide range of stakeholders in the field of sustainable transport to support signatories to reduce their emissions from the mobility sector.

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The Covenant Office is organising a series of 5 webinars on policy options to reduce emissions from the transport sector, which kickstarted on 23 June with a focus on public transport.

Lucie Petersen from UITP set the scene about the decarbonisation of public transport to achieve local climate neutrality targets. Digitalisation, affordability, decarbonising technologies and expansion of the offer are some of the main challenges that hamper the development of a clean buses market in Europe to decarbonise publictransports. Looking at the current status of electric and hydrogen buses’ deployment in Europe, there was a ramp-up of e-buses’ sales in 2021. As for fuel-cell hydrogen buses, they are still considered expensive by city authorities, despite being increasingly deployed in some Countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

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The session then looked into approaches to increase public transport ridership with two local examples. With 944km of length of bus lines, and around 600k bus passengers per day, the city of Hamburg (Germany) is making itself a pioneer at fostering public transports. Peter Lindlahr (hySOLUTIONS), explained how a mix of investments in electric and hydrogen buses, as well as in electric and hydrogen refuelling infrastructures, will make the city achieve a zero-emissions fleet by 2032. Out of 1,800 buses, 160 are electric, and a further 470 e-buses will be purchased by summer 2025.

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In Kansas city (US), the routes’ long-distance range, the higher capital costs for battery electric buses and the lack of mechanics in the supply chain, make investments in zero-emissions buses harder than in the European context, as explained by AJ Farris (Kansas City Area Transportation Authority).

The current share of hybrid & electric buses is 3%, and is planned to increase by 2027 in line with the new Regional Climate Action plan and the city’s Climate Protection & Resiliency Plan. To enhance public transport and reduce emissions, in March 2020 Kansas City also implemented a zero-fare policy, making public transportation free for all inhabitants, and a flexible-routes service, where digital technologies allow citizens to reserve tailored routes according to their needs.

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In the second block of the session, Holger Haubold, from the European Cyclist Federation (ECF), shed some light on the importance of integrated transport systems, for example between bikes and trains, also addressed in the new Rail Passenger Rights’ Regulation.Some of the strategies presented in the last ECF’s “Cyclists Love Trains” report are:having dedicated spaces on board for bikes, reserved parking spots in stations, booking channels to reserve special tickets, and integrated bike-sharing functionalities.

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Tais Costa from Citinova, Fortaleza (the 4^th largest city in Brazil) shared how the city is investing heavily to integrate bikes in its public transport system, also as a means to fight special segregation and transport poverty. With free bicycle parking for the whole day in almost all the integration terminals, a public bike sharing system (Bicicletar) free of use with the transport card, and a 14h bike sharing system thought to meet the needs of low-income groups far from the central area (Bicicleta integrada), the city of Fortaleza is radically transforming its public transportation system to reduce the use of cars.