The ENEA Office, serving as the secretariat of the North-East Asian Subregional Programme for Environmental Cooperation (NEASPEC), delivered a session on North-East Asia Low Carbon City Platform (NEA-LCCP) on 15 December 2015 in Incheon during the International Conference for National Urban Policy. The Conference was jointly organized by UN HABITAT, the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements (KRIHS) and others.

Cities are the world’s greatest producer of GDP and at the same time the world’s greatest polluter: they now emit more than 70% of global energy-related greenhouse gases and in 2015 they produced around 85% of global GDP. North-East Asian countries have 8 out of the world’s top 30 urban agglomerations with a growing urban population expected to reach over 70% of their overall population by the next decade.  For these reasons, the subregion has a critical role in ensuring global sustainability by adopting a low carbon city (LCC) approach. The world is committed than ever to help rapidly growing cities plan for smart, sustainable, green and inclusive growth.

In this context, the NEA-LCCP aims to bring together specialized agencies working on low carbon cities to share information and knowledge generated by these agencies and to provide collective support to cities for their specific needs. The NEA-LCCP Session gathered international organizations including ICLEI, OECD and the Climate Group, alongside academia, city representatives and experts from China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, to review the current works of low carbon cities in North-East Asia and discuss potential activities of NEA-LCCP.  Specifically, the Session highlighted the need for further collaboration among existing networks and agencies and greater support for more coordinated efforts. Moreover, participants called for sharing of resources including LCC experts to support national and sub-national stakeholders and greater investment in capacity building of city officials.