Since the international climate change summit City Halls to Cancun Corridors was held in New Taipei City, the local government decided to give the participants of the summit unique experience on what New Taipei City was doing for environmental conservation, taking them on a guided trip through the wetlands.

Anyone who has tried to drive through the middle of the Gold Coast, particularly during summer, will attest to how unsatisfying the traffic congestion can be. Successfully seizing this opportunity to reconceptualise transport on the Gold Coast will provide an example for the rest of the world as to how a city can ween itself from the toxic teet of the automobile.

Please watch Councillor Peter Young identify how the Gold Coast City Council is seeking to sensibly solve the area's transport conundrum.

Project: Green Growth and Windmills
Wind energy is connected to the district heating system
Potential:
- 232,000 tonnes of carbon annually by 2015
- 650,000 tonnes annually by 2025
-The City of Copenhagen buys the electricity
- Possibility of investing in green electricity from the windmills

Project: Energy-systems for storing of sustainable energy
An integrated and flexible energy system providing sustainable energy from
- Windmills
- Photovoltaic
- Geo thermal energy plants

Project: The world’s best bicycle city
37% of the Copenhageners use the bicycle as means of transportation. We wish this figure to rise to 50%.
Bicycle friendly infrastructure:
- More and broader bicycle tracks
- More green bicycle routes free from car traffic
- Green waves through traffic signals
- Improved bicycle parking possibilities

Project: Infrastructure for electric cars
- Sustainable energy for transport
- Charging stations for electric and hydrogen electric cars.

Intelligent meters:
- Access to use green energy during nights
- Payment for charging the carsProject: Climate-friendly renovation of own buildings

Renovation and energy friendly operation: Reducing the carbon emission by 50,000 tonnes
- All municipal buildings = 5% of the total volume of buildings 
- Efficient operation
- Serious savings on operating budgets

Massive investments in green urban development
- we test new green solutionsA business friendly city
- One point of contact for businesses:
- Smooth case proceedings
- Free counselling for entrepreneurs
- At good place to live:
- Room for both family and career
- Highly educated workforce
- Improves conditions for international workers

Inete Ielite chaired Session 3: Other arenas of governance at the conference City Halls to Cancun Corridors: Navigating climate change from local to global. This session looked at the development of alternative and possible competitive forums of governance in the battle against climate change and environmental protection.

City Halls to Cancun Corridors recognised that changing balances of power also affect global climate negotiations. Prodipto Ghosh's lecture clarified and reaffirmed India's position in international climate negotiations. Particularly dear to his argument was the concept of historical responsibility when it came to carbon emissions and climate change.

The former Governor of Taipei County (Xinbei City), Chou Hsi-Wei, talks about environmental policy in his constituency:

In December 2009, parties and stakeholders took note of the Copenhagen Accord, one of the documents that emerged from the COP15 and one of the more important documents in the post-Kyoto framework since COP13 resulting from long negotiations. However, the parties in the accord just “took note” and for the time being, negotiations to formulate the Post-Kyoto framework continue. The current negotiation process, including the AWG meetings in Tianjin, identify some key agendas for COP16 in Cancún. Tomonori Sudo joined former Deputy Secretary-General of the OECD, Herwig Schloegl and NTU Professor Lee Hong-Yuan, for the 4th Session of Taipei summit Navigating Climate Change from Local to Global. The session entitled "What next at Cancún?" was chaired by Fabrizio Bozzato.

This presentation by Tomonori Sudo focused on the expectations of COP negotiations on key agendas including NAMAs, REDD+ and Climate Finance.

José Maria Prazeres Pós-de-Mina is the Mayor of Moura, Portugal, who oversaw the building of what was the biggest solar power plant in the world, in a town of just 16,500 people. This led to Moura being a net exporter of sustainable energy.

Lisa Libby serves as the liaison between Mayor Adams and the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability to develop policies that are focused on long-range planning and carbon emissions reduction. Key policies include the Portland/Multnomah County Climate Action Plan and the Portland Plan.

Portland, Oregon's commitment to sustainability is built on a foundation of leadership set in place generations ago by civic leaders who recognized the importance of protecting this unique place in the Pacific Northwest. From the statewide land-use planning laws that created urban growth boundaries to the pioneers of light rail who chose smarter transit over another freeway, Portland has benefited from the courageous decisions made in years past.

Portland continues to define the urban sustainable experience for other American cities. In just the past two decades, Portland has innovated and experimented its way to the forefront on everything from green building (with the most LEED-certified green buildings per capita of any American city) to environmental stewardship (bringing ecological approaches to treating stormwater in a way that saves money and protects our rivers and watersheds). Portland boasts the highest rate of active commuters (bicycle and pedestrian commuters) in the U.S., a statistic built on smart investments in bicycle infrastructure and a fact that yields a healthier and more active community.

Under the leadership of Mayor Sam Adams, Portland is charging forward with ambitious and aggressive plans to be America's living laboratory for urban sustainability. Our climate action plan will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Our economic development strategy targets 10,000 new jobs, with a focus on clean technology and renewable energy. Portland is now home to the U.S. headquarters of Solarworld, Vestas, Iberdrola and other international leaders in the green economy. Portland leaders are working to grow industries of the future and build on the city’s reputation for developing environmentally responsible solutions so that its citizens can sustainably live a life they enjoy and guarantee for future generations.

I am pleased and honored to speak today in a meeting that brings together elected officials and representatives of greater Taipei and of so many cities around the world - Asia, Europe, America ... All of us are aiming to make our metropolitan communities more human, friendlier, more apt at balancing natural and social equilibriums, and able to ensure the future well-being of their descendants. All of us are convinced that urbanisation is not a “fate” that will go inevitably with pollution and destruction of resources, but that it rather represents an opportunity that humankind gives itself so as to invent technological, political and human solutions to tackle the evils from which we suffer. The city is a place where imagination can be released, generosity expressed and solidarity forged.

The thinking around the world on the relationship between urbanisation and new forms of governance has several notable features: Firstly, everyone observes that we are marching towards a knowledge economy, a system that favours interactions between entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, developers and production engineers. The second feature that characterizes globalisation is that it integrates the power of urbanisation into the economic development of the regions and countries that these cities irrigate. In this urbanisation process the concept of world cities has taken root. The characteristic of such a process is that economic growth is generally much higher among these world cities than in the rest of their countries. There are currently five world cities: Tokyo, London, New York, Paris and Shanghai. Many cities in Asia, especially China and India, and Latin America will eventually reach this status.

The lack of governance structure explains why despite its economic power, the Ile-de-France recorded growth figures lower than those experienced by the rest of France or other European cities. This lack of governance also explains that huge nuggets of jobs are not exploited. For example, the Saclay area is home to two universities and many prestigious schools and businesses. Its campus, in terms of scientists’ numbers and scientific fields concerned, bears comparison with the most prestigious foreign campuses. Thus the number of research publications, used as a criterion of effectiveness in the research sector, is equal to the one registered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Stanford. And it should catch up very quickly the level of Cambridge. However, at present, commuting in Saclay is ensured only by a few bus and one regional metro station, with no overall vision! That's why the State (in its role as strategic decision maker) had to come up with a bill on the Greater Paris. This text aims at fostering nine urban strategic poles, similar to that of Saclay, and at developing their transport infrastructure so as to support their dynamism. We hope that these nine clusters will eventually become modern cities, each of around 400 000 to 500 000 inhabitants. Thus, the law on Greater Paris tends to bring two main answers for reviving growth in the Ile-de-France and its global attractiveness in the world system. The first answer lies in a transport network serving the areas around Paris, according to a double-loop route that will serve the strategic areas.The second answer lies in the establishment of a ground-breaking cluster of innovation, based on a concentration of world-class universities and public or private researchers installed on the Saclay plateau, with State guarantees to support the development strategy. At a time of accrued competition among major world cities, it was essential to give Greater Paris the scale of, say, Greater London. At the same time, the unity and cooperation of local authorities that together constitute the Greater Paris could not simply be decreed from above. Like any very large region, Greater Paris is an ecosystem and a living ecosystem relies on self-regulation, ongoing consultation, flexibility, and continued creativity - not just planning and prioritisation.

To sustain that ecosystem - and here we enter the heart of our topic - traffic, communication and fluidity are key requirements. And here we have a lot of work to do. 900 000 residents of suburbs come daily to work in Paris and 300,000 Parisians go in the opposite direction. 95% of Parisians live within 600m of a metro or RER, while in inner suburbs it is the case of less than 50% of the population. The average time traveled between home and the workplace is 30 minutes for the inhabitants of Paris and 45 minutes for residents of inner suburbs. Traffic jams remain a sad reality in the Paris region, as experienced by tourists who go from the Roissy Airport to the heart of the capital... Fluid transportation is a key factor for the quality of living in urban areas. When meeting with environmental requirements, finding alternatives for clean transport and increasing the availability of transit is a priority for the future of metropolitan Paris. Today, the travel conditions in the Paris area remain insufficient and uneven, failing to respond to changing needs. The development of transversal transportation across suburbs is a priority. Network saturation during peak hours, lack of stops in small crown, the frequency of failures and ensuing longer transit time seriously harms the quality of metropolitan life. These weaknesses also weigh on the economic life of the city, because they affect the delivery time of goods and movement of employees.

Reflecting on the planning and development pursued from the ground realities we must avoid copying the models of global cities that, while developing fast economically, are noisy, polluted and violent. The quality of life in a metropolis on a human scale is a key factor of attractiveness.

Even if the Grand Paris is a project implemented in the territory of the Region Ile de France, the economic benefits, financing, and implementation work has a national dimension. Therefore, the government, not the region, created a special ministry to propose a bill, and manage the project, which should take place until at least 2020.

Thank you.

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(Photo by Cathy Chuang)

Benoit Vermander discusses the complexity of the the various networks and actors when it comes to global climate change negotiations and environmental issues. How can these difficulties be turned into opportunities? How can cities take the leading role on climate change?