Bloomberg Philanthropies on Wednesday announced a $50 million initiative to help cities address global issues including climate change through programs proven effective in other cities around the world.
The Bloomberg Cities Exchange will provide start-up cost and technical support grants to the city, as well as sponsor tours and webinars to inform leaders on new initiatives.
“Cities are transformative forces in all the big challenges we face, and we have a long-standing commitment to spreading the best ideas around the world,” said Michael R. Blum, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Berg said in a statement. “This new Bloomberg Cities Creative Exchange Center will strengthen and expand these efforts, bringing new strength and rigor to the replication process.”
The new measure, announced Wednesday at the Bloomberg City Labs conference in Washington, formalizes a process that City Labs has used for years. As a former mayor of New York City, Bloomberg knows the importance of looking for ideas that have been proven in other cities, said James Anderson, director of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ government innovation program.
“He understood the unique opportunity that city leaders have to drive local progress while also contributing to solving global problems like climate change,” Anderson told The Associated Press in an interview. “We looked around and quickly learned that many The inability of city halls to find solutions and implement them locally makes them more ambitious and moves the city and the world forward.”
Anderson said they believe philanthropy can play an important role in helping cities launch innovative projects and then secure more funding from the government or other donors.
The Bloomberg City Ideas Exchange program builds on the success of programs such as an environmental initiative in Lincoln, Nebraska, that converts wood waste into a charcoal material called biochar that reduces releases into the atmosphere The amount of carbon dioxide in the.
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird said the city received a $400,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2022 to launch the program, which has already brought the city changed.Biochar – the city produces it from trees blown down in storms or damaged by wind and rain Emerald Ash Worm — Capture carbon, conserve water and improve soil.
“We have ambitious climate action goals,” said Gayle Baird. “We are looking for innovative solutions to help us sequester carbon and improve quality of life, as well as deal with some of the impacts of changing weather patterns.”
Without funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to launch the biochar program so quickly, Gayle Baird said. or receive a $100,000 grant from the Nebraska Forest Service.
Mattias Gustafsson is co-founder of consultancy EcoTopic and project manager of the Stockholm biochar scheme, on which the Lincoln project is modeled. He said he was “proud and amazed” to see the idea replicated around the world. In the U.S., biochar programs have also been launched in Cincinnati and Minneapolis, as well as in Helsinki and Darmstadt in Germany, Helsingborg in Sweden and Sandnes in Norway — all with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies help.
“Cities are really critical to combating climate change because they have different perspectives,” Gustafsson said. “Cities are not out to make a profit. They are trying to do something good for their citizens.”
Anderson said the Bloomberg Cities Creative Exchange aims to help cities achieve this goal.Many projects focused on by Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Mayors Challengehas been replicated by cities around the world.
this Providence Talks A Rhode Island program that helps young children learn by increasing the number of words they hear each day has been adopted by Birmingham, Alabama.this city visor The program in Guadalajara, Mexico, which allows businesses to obtain licenses entirely online, has been expanded to 100 other cities in Mexico and will soon be launched in other Latin American cities.
Anderson said city officials receive a lot of immediate feedback from residents, who are always looking for new ideas to help them do their jobs better.
“They don’t spend a lot of time making speeches and engaging in partisanship because their job is to provide services that people rely on every day,” he said. “Residents have a responsibility to provide visible and measurable solutions that change their lives. Cities understand that sometimes these ideas can come from entrepreneurs at home, and other times it’s great to steal these ideas from the city down the street.”
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