Dear Signatories of the Covenant of Mayors!

On April 29 at 10:00 we invite you to join the specialized online conference "Green Restart: Renovation of Public Buildings", which collects the best experience and speaks out the difficulties faced by Eastern European municipalities (from Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania) during the development of an energy efficient municipal sector.

Dear Signatories of the Covenant of Mayors!

We invite you to take part in the webinar on "Monitoring reporting under the Covenant of Mayors", that will be held on April 15, 2021.

The 12th issue of the CoM East newsletter is dedicated to the project activities that helped ensuring sustainable local development and strengthening capacities of the CoM Signatories, CNCs/CTCs and Supporters in the continuing pandemic realia. You will find out the main figures demonstrating the Covenant of Mayors growth in the region as of March 1, 2021. The newsletter also provides information about the helpdesk activities – almost 300 consultations conducted by the CoM East project experts in six Eastern Partnership countries, which proved to be an effective supporting tool for CoM Signatories to meet their energy and climate change adaptation commitments. Finally, you will learn about a number of specialised capacity-building regional webinars and online trainings as well as different country-specific events held by the CoM East teams in the region.

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Find out the main figures of the Covenant of Mayors in Eastern Partnership countries as of March 1, 2021.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic impact and restrictions worldwide, the CoM East project technical experts continued providing their strong support to the Covenant of Mayors Signatories in Eastern Partnership countries within the project helpdesk activities, in particular by receiving and processing multiple consultancy requests on various CoM related issues. In October 2020 – March 2021, the CoM East project experts provided 292 consultations by phone and e-mail to the representatives of CoM Signatories and CTCs in their countries.

In order to help ensuring sustainable development in local communities and strengthening capacity building of the municipalities in Eastern Partnership countries, the CoM East project team organised a number of regional webinars aimed at supporting CoM Signatories to meet their energy and climate change adaptation commitments.

October 12-15, 2020

Train-the-trainers workshop

On October 12-15, 2020, the second online train-the-trainers workshop took place with a view to improving the level of knowledge of the CoM East Country Experts and Helpdesks officers in the field of technical issues of SECAP development and implementation: climate change and adaptation, risks and vulnerabilities, implementation of energy efficiency activities, available CoM tools, etc. 

The first similar workshop was organised in November 2016, when a number of developments and updates in the CoM initiative occurred in recent years. Considering the need to transfer CoM’s ownership to the national level and due to the requests from the CoM East experts, it was decided to organise the second workshop in late 2019 or 2020. In order to identify the needs and knowledge gaps of the Country Experts and Helpdesk officers, a specific needs assessment survey was carried out in June 2019. Participants identified the relevance of 12 suggested topics as well as type of knowledge and/or concrete topic they were interested in.

January 19, 2021

Webinar on the EU experience in development of municipal adaptation plans

On January 19, 2021, CoM East project organised a regional webinar on the EU experience in development of municipal adaptation plans (MAPs) for the team of the project experts, national stakeholders and partners. A presentation on objectives, activities and experience of the “Climate change adaptation plans in 44 Polish cities” (“Let’s Feel the Climate”) project was delivered by professor Maciej Sadowski, climatologist from the Institute of Environmental Protection – National Research Institute (Poland). The project with the overarching objective of increasing the resilience of cities to hazards relating to climate change involved 44 cities in Poland and was implemented in 2017-2019.

January 26, 2021

Webinar on the City Climate Finance Gap Fund

On January 26, 2021, a webinar on the City Climate Finance Gap Fund was held by the CoM East project together with Global Covenant of Mayors. It was attended by the experts of the CoM East project, as well as representatives of CoM National Coordinators and CoM Supporters in the Eastern Partnership countries. The keynote speaker was Mr Andy Deacon, Director of Strategy and Operations, Secretariat of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM).

The City Climate Finance Gap Fund was established jointly by the ministers and governments leaders of Germany and Luxembourg, with the participation of the World Bank, European Investment Bank and Global Covenant of Mayors in September 2020. The key goal of the Gap Fund is to help cities in developing and emerging countries turn resilient low-carbon ideas into strategies and finance-ready projects through: 

• supporting the prioritization of investments as part of a climate strategy or investment program
• providing capacity building for low-carbon capacity and climate-resilient urban development
• defining project concept definitions and the components of pre-feasibility studies
• matchmaking with additional support sources for later stages of project preparation
• supporting a strengthened approach to project financing
• offering potential support to fill in other project preparation gaps
• supporting city climate strategy development and generation of in-depth analytics to assess the climate action and resilience potential of plans and investment programs

February 26, 2021

CoM EU - CoM East exchange webinar on municipal adaptation

On February 26, 2021, the CoM EU - CoM East exchange webinar on municipal adaptation was held in Cascais, Portugal. The event aimed to introduce the experience of the municipality of Cascais, which is a Signatory of the Covenant of Mayors and a member of the Climate Alliance, in the field of development and implementation of the municipal adaptation action plan. 

The event was organised for the expert team of the CoM East project as well as representatives of CoM Coordinators and Supporters from the EaP region. It is the first in the series of the planned experience exchange and capacity building communications with the European Signatories advanced in development and implementation of municipal adaptation strategies. The key speaker was Mr. João Dinis from Cascais Ambiente – Cascais Municipal Environment Company, who delivered the presentation and addressed the most important issues within the webinar topic.

On April 6 a country-specific training #7 on “Development of community-specific local adaptation strategies for the CoM signatories in Armenia” is being held for the singnatories of the EC project ''Covenant of Mayors - East''.

Energy efficient modernization of lighting systems in Zelva.

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Energy efficient modernization of lighting systems in Vawkavysk, st. Zholudzeva.

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Energy efficient modernization of lighting systems in Vawkavysk, st. Zholudzeva.

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