Background and Objectives:

As the most populated developing country, China is facing incomparable challenges of sustainable urbanisation. Successful implementation of its Sustainable Development Strategy will have a great impact on the global sustainable development process.

In January 2005, UN-HABITAT, with UNEP through their Sustainable Cities Programme(SCP), initiated the second round SCP National Dissemination Project in four phases: Phase 1: City partnering and mobilization; Phase 2: Localization of SCP toolkits and customization of training materials; Phase 3: Applying the China Sustainable Cities Programme/ Environmental Planning Management (SCP-EPM) approach in three demonstration cities; and Phase 4: Developing the national policy learning framework and replication dissemination strategy. In February 2005, three pilot cities were selected on a demand-driven basis: Panzhihua, Hailin and Guiyang, and the National Consultative Committee formally launched the project. 

The project aims to strengthen the three cities’ environmental governance approaches, prioritize environmental concerns affecting civic society, and establish cross-sectoral working groups to develop citywide Localizing Agenda 21 (LA21) Strategies and Supporting Action Plans.

Activities:
The main activities include:

• Adapting, translating and validating Sustainable Cities Programme materials and lessons learned with National Sustainable Community Network partners for application during this second phase project.
• Customizing materials and introducing them through a series of training workshops to the three demonstration cities.
• Supporting city teams to prepare their City Environmental Profiles to define key environmental issues of concern.
• Preparing proposition papers for a broad-based city consultation.
• Conducting the city consultation and establishing issue-specific working groups.
• Negotiating and agreeing upon issue strategies.
• Designing and implementing neighbourhood-based demonstration projects for sustainable development.
• Documenting the application of the process and the results-based impacts.
• Revising training materials into a customized training manual for other Chinese cities.
• Sharing the lessons learned amongst national partners and promoting policy dialogues.
• Agreeing upon a replication strategy to disseminate the lessons learned to other Chinese cities.

Results:

• Phase 1 lessons used to customize the Sustainable Cities Programme training materials, all of which have been translated and disseminated to the three cities through training workshops by Beijing University. 
• Environmental profiles for all three cities completed. 
• City consultations conducted for all three cities, with issue-specific working groups established. 
• Strategy and action planning implemented, which is ongoing. 
• Processes documented.