The International Center for Climate Governance announced the winners of its 2013 Best Climate Practices Awards for “Climate Change and Urban Resilience. How to prepare our cities to respond to climate change related challenges”. The competition, open to all urban resilience to climate change practices designed or implemented in 2012, was created as part of the ICCG Best Climate Practices observatory. The initiative aims to disseminate information on climate practices worthy of particular emphasis for their originality and effectiveness.

The winners of the two awards granted by the contest, the Experts’ Choice Award and the Users’ Choice Award, were announced during a special event entitled “Good ideas to prepare our cities for Climate Change” and held in Venice on September 27th, 2013.

The winner of the Experts’ Choice Award is the New York City Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, aiming to transform the city into a highly resilient urban space with respect to all expected climate impacts and in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. New York City’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will receive the award from ICCG Director Carlo Carraro on October 16, 2013, in New York City.

The winner of the Users’ Choice Award is TORRI2020, a Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) project for Torri di Quartesolo, a municipality of 12.000 inhabitants located in the Italian province of Vicenza (Italy). The project was envisioned by Diego Pellizzaro and Emiliano Vettore, two urban planners and founders of Green DEV.

ICCG awards the winners with a sculpture made of artistic glass from Murano, handcrafted by the famous Murano Glass Master Simone Cenedese.

How were the prizes assigned?
Winners have been selected among 35 practices submitted by users, experts and the committee itself and were evaluated based on four criteria: the feasibility of the actions proposed by the practice, the potential replicability of the practice, the originality of the practice’s ideas, and the likely impact on climate change adaptation and mitigation actions.
The selection committee of the Expert’ Choice Award was formed by internationally well known experts that have been working for many years on measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change: Professor Anthony Bigio (George Washington University, previously for many years at the World Bank), Dr. Raffaello Cervigni (The World Bank), Dr. Jan Corfee-Morlot (OECD), Professor Robert H. Socolow (Princeton University) and Professor Carlo Carraro (International Center for Climate Governance and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice).
The Users’ Choice Award was assigned based on evaluations from the Best Climate Practices website users, that have been allowed to rate online the practices described in Best Climate Practices Observatory by assigning a vote from 1 to 5 to each of the four assessment criteria listed above.

Why Urban Resilience?
The decision to focus the 2013 contest on Urban Resilience was driven by ICCG’s belief that new perspectives on the practices used to protect urban environments against disruptive climate change challenges may lie in the collective brilliance of a wide range of people around the world. In this context, ICCG encouraged institutions, scientists, enterprises, think tanks, stakeholders, researchers, and members of the public to reflect constructively on the problem and develop innovative solutions aiming to fight the wide range of challenges posed by global climate change.

Visit the Best Climate Practices observatory
Watch the photos of the event at the ICCG website
For more information, please e-mail: [email protected].