This post is by Florencia Romano, Undersecretary of Open Government and Accountability of Buenos Aires City

  • **The problem: **Cities are primarily responsible for addressing the challenge of climate change since they consume 80% of the energy and emit around 70% of greenhouse gases.
  • Why it matters: The climate crisis is one of the biggest issues facing our planet.
  • The solution: With the open government framework, local governments manage to join efforts with citizens, the private sector, civil society organizations (CSOs) and experts.

Climate Action BA

In 2016 Buenos Aires adhered to the Sustainable Development Goals and in 2017 became one of the first 25 cities in the world to commit to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

Within the framework of the commitments made by the city, in 2020 we developed BA Climate Change, a platform that provides citizens with open data and visualisations on initiatives and goals, as well as proposals for participation, collaboration and cooperation to achieve a resilient, sustainable and carbon-neutral city.

BA Climate Change brings together in one place all the energy efficiency, sustainable mobility and waste management policies implemented by the local government to fight climate change. It also includes education, urban space and sustainable consumption policies for prevention and adaptation.

We are the first city in the world to address climate action with an open government approach, as BA Climate Change allows citizens to learn about and monitor the main actions carried out by the City in order to achieve SDG 13: Climate Action.

BA Climate Change was included as part of the map of local practices and initiatives on the sustainability of the international platform Local4ActionHubs of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).

Why it’s important to address climate change in a collaborative way

Cities are primarily responsible for addressing the challenge of climate change since, although they occupy only three percent of the total surface area, they consume 80% of the energy and emit around 70% of greenhouse gases. Moreover, estimates indicate that by 2050 two-thirds of the world's population will be living in cities. For this reason, cities are leading the implementation of the main commitments undertaken by the world's countries.

Nevertheless, the Buenos Aires City Government understands that we cannot make progress in the fight against climate change by working alone. It is necessary, within the framework of open government, the joint effort with citizens, the private sector, civil society organisations (CSOs) and experts.

An open government and collaboration tool

The BA Climate Change platform combines open environmental information and civic activation to involve citizens in a collective action of cultural change to mitigate climate change. The site is the result of a co-creation process where experts, civil society organisations and neighbours participated to shape it and devise the civic activation functionalities that the platform proposes.

Through BA Climate Change, the city opens up access to its data on climate change and makes available more than 30 datasets that can be downloaded and reused. In addition, the platform enables users to access emission reduction targets for 2030 and 2050 and information on clean energy generation, existing infrastructure to promote sustainable mobility and integrated waste management, which combined contribute 14% of the country's CO2 emissions. It also contains interactive visualisations on greenhouse gas inventories, emissions by sector, subsector, source and scope, temperature and precipitation evolution, and air quality.

We also include the city’s most forward-thinking initiatives and updates on climate action, as well as proposals for the different actors to make their contribution. The platform makes visible the collaborative work with neighbours, civil society organisations and the private sector.

We publish all the existing collaboration and cooperation initiatives with international organisations and the different spaces for dialogue with civil society.

What was the co-creation process like?

Stage 1: Expert interviews

In this exploratory stage, we conducted in-depth interviews with 15 activists, government and CSO representatives. After processing and analysing the content of the interviews, we obtained the following recommendations:

  • **Environmental indicators and information: **interviewees suggested including information regarding: water quality, energy consumption, air quality, temperatures, waste, automobile circulation, energy, historical data and transparency in the management of the agenda within the government. They considered it important to publish public data in open format and to include visualisations.
  • Visualisation in communication: interviewees recommended using interactive maps and storytelling as a discursive resource.
  • Climate Action Plan (CAP): interviewees suggested publishing the full CAP report and making the plan auditable. They also recommended that the CAP should have clear objectives and indicators that allow for monitoring and follow-up.
  • User experience: they advised that the platform should be interactive and have a pedagogical approach by being user-centered.

Stage 2: co-creation with civil society actors.

We held several sectoral roundtables with the aim of understanding what sustainable actions citizens were already performing, what obstacles they encountered and to generate new ideas to co-create a Citizen Activation Programme with the participants.

In addition, we carried out the following activities:

  • "Citizen Participation and Climate Change" ideathon: we invited the participants to think of actions of citizen involvement for the mitigation of carbon emissions.
  • Co-creation workshop: aimed at an audience knowledgeable about the agenda. Its objective was to gather initiatives for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, and incentives to provide to citizens.
  • Ideation roundtables for citizen activation initiatives: we carried out two instances of working roundtables with Buenos Aires City neighbours to increase the co-creation process.
  • **Collective Climate Action Hackathon: **in these participation roundtables, participants co-designed digital product layouts that could be implemented in the BA Climate Change platform to enhance civic activation.

Stage 3: Public data

In this third stage, we focused on the data. We implemented collaborative data collection. For instance, we took part in the Participatory Air Monitoring Experiment with the aim of comparing air quality values at different stages of the pandemic isolation in the city. In addition, we guaranteed that all public datasets and information visualised on the platform are available for reuse by citizens.

A model to be replicated in other cities around the world

Because of the way it was developed, the BA Climate Change model can be replicated and adapted by any person or government, with the collaboration of the Buenos Aires City Government. Depending on the characteristics of each administration, new functionalities can be added favouring collaboration, collective action and intelligence.

We believe that collaboration between cities is essential to achieve progress in the climate action agenda. It is also an opportunity to promote open government policies and contribute to SDG 16: Peace, justice and strong institutions.

A shared responsibility

In total, more than 600 people participated in the co-creation process of the BA Climate Change platform, through the various roundtables, interviews and meetings.

In Buenos Aires City we understand that the institutional capacity of government is necessary but not sufficient to solve the current challenges of society. The actions of openness, participation, collaboration and co-creation expand this capacity to diverse actors.

By involving strategic actors we generate collective action and intelligence, as well as adding value to public policies.

The only way of achieving the cultural change we are seeking is by providing citizens with clear and accessible information, and concrete actions so that everyone can make their contributions.

(Image Credit: Unsplash)

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