About us

What is the carbonn® Climate Registry (cCR)

The carbonn® Climate Registry (cCR) is the global reporting platform for cities, towns and regions tackling climate change - created to support transparency, accountability and credibility.

It serves local and sub-national governments that report voluntarily and publicly. Reported data helps to build a strong case for the impact of local climate action, showing how this could connect to, and even raise the level of ambition, of the combined Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of to realize the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

The cCR was launched at the World Mayors Summit on Climate in Mexico City on 21 November 2010, to support Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of local climate action. The cCR is operated by the Bonn Center for Local Climate Action and Reporting (carbonn® Center), hosted by the ICLEI World Secretariat.

Why use the carbonn® Climate Registry (cCR)? (the Mission of cCR)

Core reporting elements

Four main areas of reporting are core elements to deal with MRV of local climate action, namely:

• Commitments reflect any pledge to address climate resilience, including adaptation, as well as climate and energy related targets adopted to reduce community and/or government operations' GHG emissions, to switch to renewable energy, to improve energy efficiency, and/or to address a specific sector. 
• Performance is used to define the baseline and then track progress using quantified data, e.g. of community and/or government GHG emissions; energy generation and consumption; other sectoral progress; tracking risks and vulnerabilities.
• Action plans show the clustering of diverse actions to tackle climate change mitigation and/or adaptation / resilience.
• Actions include a diversity of measures that are planned, implemented and monitored, for example developing a strategy, action plan or policy; enabling regulation; offering technical assistance; constructing sustainable infrastructure; implementing a fiscal or financial mechanism; engage local stakeholders, etc..– in either or both mitigation and adaptation. Each action is also defined in terms of its duration, status of implementation and status and origin of financing.

Benefits for users

• Profile your leadership – inspire your peers, demonstrate good governance
• Ensure your voice is heard – quality data helps to shape global climate advocacy messaging
• Show national governments the impact of local climate action
• Report on progress and how this could link to the NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions)
• Recognize the best reporters – with most comprehensive and quality data - will be recognized
• Celebrate top achievers!
• Use benchmarking, statistics and other services to evaluate your performance
• The cCR is linked to NAZCA, to showcase and further raise visibility of local and regional climate action – in particular targets and commitments

Serving multiple initiatives and projects

The carbonn® Climate Registry serves many important initiatives and projects with the underlying aim to strengthen local and subnational climate action. Each initiative addresses a specific target group and theme, with its own objectives. Here ICLEI works with many partners to accelerate and track the impact of local climate action.

The Registry is also a prime data partner of the UNFCCC’s Non State Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) Platform.

Dealing with data aggregation

The Registry has been expanded and regularly upgraded (previously called the carbonn® Cities Climate Registry), offering a flexible and robust reporting framework. Recent enhancements include a reporting structure that supports:

• Horizontal aggregation – where cities, towns and districts in a region cooperation – reporting and tracking their impacts together
• Vertically integrated reporting of climate change mitigation and adaptation – coordinating reporting between different levels of government, e.g. a local government reporting to a sub-national government. This responds to the need avoid double counting, while determining at which level of government the commitments, GHG developments and actions are made.

Progress made since 2010

As of June 2017, there are 1153 reporting jurisdictions (locla and sub-national governments) from 90 countries, representing 840 million people, i.e. 8% of the global population and 14% of the world’s urban population.

Reporting addresses community and territory level, as well as government operations. Data used includes bottom-up and disaggregated data (depending on data availability and quality).