Low Carbon City

Juliana Gutiérrez is co-founder and director of Low Carbon City, a citizen-led global movement working to tackle climate change. She has focused her career of over 15 years in international cooperation for development and sustainability, working, volunteering and leading different causes in public, private and academic organizations like UN-Habitat, UNDP, Amnesty International, AIESEC, La Ciudad Verde, among others in Colombia, Chile, Canada and South Korea. During the last 5 years, she has mobilized over 50.000 people in 120 cities for climate action through an extensive collaborative network of organization from the public and private sector, academia, activist, entrepreneurs and changemakers creating collective solutions to tackle climate change.  

She has a BS in Finance and International Relations, postgraduate studies in Political Studies, and International Cooperation, a MA in Environmental Studies, and a MA in International Studies from Korea University. She is an Echoing Green (2017) and Ashoka climate Fellow (2019).

Citizens are often excluded from climate governance, and are not aware of the impact and power their actions can have on their communities and the broader move towards a sustainable future. This demonstrates a lack of space and tools to collectively work towards the development of low-carbon and resilient cities. Our work creates spaces for these citizens through creative, participatory and artistic tools to enhance sustainable lifestyles, drawing attention to the climate emergency. We have a bottom-up strategy that includes three integrated pillars: Educate, Create, Connect. By creating new knowledge spaces, projects and sharing innovative sustainable solutions our work acts as a tool to mainstream climate at the local and national levels, helping to bridge the gap on climate awareness involving all sectors of society. We believe that these challenges are solvable as long as we create solutions for dialogue and empowerment, particularly  between generations, today and tomorrow’s stakeholders. 

• 55% percent of the world’s population inhabits cities, cities produce 70% of GHG emissions whilst only occupying 3% of the Earth’s surface. Accordingly, solutions should be generated to urban perspectives, and include their inhabitants ideas and participation. 

• The past 30 years of climate science and policy have not led to sufficient action, information is too technical or distant to ensure comprehension by ordinary citizens, creating a gap between information, understanding and action. 

• Globally, according to Carbon Brief and analysis of a global survey shows that more than 1/3 of the world's adults have never heard of climate change. For some countries, such as South Africa, Bangladesh and Nigeria, this rises to more than two thirds of the adult population. The study says that education is the "strongest predictor" of public awareness of climate change. Improving basic education and public understanding of climate change are vital to building support for climate action. In summary, although climate change is a global challenge, it is not yet a matter of people's daily lives let alone actions towards solutions.

We work to include citizens in climate governance, stimulate sustainable behavioral change, and build collective solutions by: 

Educating citizens creatively about climate-friendly lifestyles, the impacts of their CO2 footprints and offering action-oriented and behavior change education i.e. international photography and poster contests, urban interventions (#30DaysforTheClimate), tactical urbanism actions and forums on emerging trends in climate action. We create adapted knowledge solutions, reports, webinars and guides to ensure the latest in climate science and policy, translated into a simple and easy language.

Connecting experts and citizens to create communities of practice, collaborate through awareness-raising forums, brainstorming challenges, opportunities and solutions that allow all sectors to integrate sustainable practices. We host annually the Low Carbon City’s World Forum, a citizen-led forum, positioning on a global stage citizen debate on climate change and bringing the voices of citizens on an international scale. 

Creating adapted solutions with partners and local communities promoting sectoral initiatives to be scalable in other cities, and sharing best practices and knowledge whilst creating advocacy tools at the political and citizen level. We tackle issues like engaging youth in sustainability, low carbon neighborhoods, or bringing innovative sustainable solutions to private and public institutions. 

We empower women, children, youth and marginalized communities giving them a voice in climate governance. By mobilizing citizens to gain the knowledge necessary to develop solutions, we identify new leaders that become climate change champions in their communities. Their bottom-up, citizen-led ideas lead to projects that solve local communal challenges in terms of renewable energy, urban agriculture, waste management, sustainable mobility and public space renewal. These projects provide easy, low-cost, scalable solutions that reduce GHG emissions and building resilience benefitting entire communities. If citizens are not involved in the governance of climate change cities lose a potential for collective participation to co-create solutions. To understand their needs and promote participatory processes we use a variety of tools depending on each context, partner and challenge. Some of the tools are design thinking and systemic thinking to address specific solutions in territories, likewise, we have our own methodology for collective construction through co-creation processes applied to neighborhoods and different actors involved. We use tactical urbanism and ARTivism, as tools to raise awareness and educate and promote citizen engagement. We have used open pedagogy and open data generation, such as “climatons”, collaborative mapping, and free software to gather information.

Climate change is a collective problem requiring a collective solution. Low Carbon City activates an ecosystem for the collective construction of solutions to tackle climate change whilst also providing tools for citizens to lead the change from their daily lives, their environment and their communities. All citizens can be part of the solution and Low Carbon City provides a platform for education on climate change, co-creating sustainable solutions along with other city stakeholders and connecting with a wide international network of experts, change-makers, funders and likeminded citizens to exchange knowledge. 

From a young age I was very socially committed but not yet on sustainability. Having learnt little about sustainability in prior education and with a new spur to acquire climate knowledge, I travelled to South Korea for my second masters in International Development. I researched on low carbon development in cities and despite being happy with the results, I realized climate challenges could not be tackled by dissertations left in the university library. I returned home with a new-found motivation to generate climate change awareness but was met with a lack of interest form both private and public sector. Frustrated, I sought like-minded individuals, eventually finding La Ciudad Verde, a Colombian think-do tank working towards urban sustainability through creative strategies demanding governmental action. Here, I met my co-founder Juan Manuel Restrepo and friends that help build Low Carbon City. We gathered our technical, governance, activism and sustainability knowledge and inspired by the UN SDGs and UNFCCC Paris Agreement ultimately built Low Carbon City in December 2015. Low Carbon City was then more a movement to generate climate change awareness, however, has now developed into an international non-profit platform where all stakeholders from society meet to generate low-carbon and resilient cities. 

Ignited by my innate social development passion, I have supported social and environmental causes throughout my life since I was little. In 2013, when I finished my master’s research and found the immense potential that cities have to catalyze climate change solutions and that this potential cannot be developed until citizens are aware that we must change our life habits, I have not stopped working to make this happen. I believe that individual actions, combined with collective actions change the world and I have made it my life commitment to work towards it. I am aware of climate change technicality and the big threat it represent to humankind, but I have also a bunch of examples that when citizens are empowered with open data and simple messages from everyday life it is possible to change behaviours and generate solutions. It is precisely for this reason that I enjoy creating and generating actions that facilitate the means for people to become part of the solution with our work at Low Carbon City. I believe humankind needs to evolve in a cooperative regenerative way and every community holds immense potentiality when it has the chance to use their collective intelligence.

My experience as a climate entrepreneur has allowed me to create, develop and experience a theory of change that has been the guide for scaling up our impact. As a result, I have identified, hundreds of talented climate leaders, change makers, communities and partners who support us and help us to scale up our impact. 

Besides my experience as entrepreneur, I have 14 years of experience in the public and private sector in international relations, and international cooperation for the development, leading social and environmental projects, and as a consultant and advisor where I not only designed operation strategies but also fundraising through national and international organizations, where I have being part of cross-cultural and diverse teams. From those experiences, I have strong project management skills and I know about project designing, executing and measuring. 

I was born and raised in Colombia, but I have an academic a professional background abroad, living in Austria, Canada, Chile, South Korea, United Kingdom, and traveling internationally which gives me a pretty wide network that has been helpful for the growth of our ambassador network in 120 cities around the world. I have been able to combine my professional background with the research and practice of collaborative climate action. I’ve been recognized in my country as women who are changing the world with their ideas by national media, and I have got international acknowledgement as the special commendation of MIT Climate Colab, the Collective Global Accelerator, Echoing Green, Ashoka and the BBVA Momentum.

In 2018, we collaboratively developed a transformative idea for the informal settlement, Moravia. Together with the Moravia community and our partners from Germany Urban Oasis we developed a collaborative community process for a low-carbon, resilient neighborhood. Our contribution was focus on the urban agriculture perspective and during 7 months, we cultivated the concept extensively gathering know-how, partners, resources and realized feasibility studies but right before implementation. With designs, materials, community leaders, and an international team on site, the municipality prohibited the intervention on public ground last minute. This moment of disappointment quickly became our pivotal turning point. Together with our partners, we identified a new appropriate alternatives against all odds, we ended up building a community center in the last minute in a neighbor property with a community orchard and it ended up gaining more support and care from the neighborhood than would have been achieved initially. It became a bottom-up solution, that besides the lack of government support, indirectly benefited 45.000 local citizens via continuous sustainable activities. Today even government officials use and benefit for this bottom up solution built.

In 2016, Medellín had been on alert due to critical air quality, registering never-before-seen pollution levels. We therefore wanted to create a massive awareness campaign about Medellín’s air pollution, however realised that private companies wouldn’t support such an ‘unattractive’ topic. We therefore used our prior experience in artivism to show that even without financial support we can find creative alternative ways that have bigger impacts at lower costs. Ultimately, we spend less than 30USD. On April 8, 2016 our founding intervention launched, placing air pollution masks over Botero’s world-famous statues an emblematic tourist site in Medellín to start a discussion on the dangerous pollution. Our message did not go unnoticed, attracting tourists, international journalists, political leaders. We were able to set the agenda on air pollution in Medellín, kickstarting dialogue between all actors. It was our pivotal turning-point, and as co-director I took the lead in our new-found awareness to organize our first World Forum. The response was amazing, generating over 3000 participants from 38 countries. From there, we created projects, activating an ambassador network and built a community striving for low-carbon cities. 2 years after the intervention, the decarbonizing policy for the metropolitan area in the city was launched.

Our work at Low Carbon City is innovative because it promotes an alternative solution to the current climate change governance (bottom up), putting cities and citizens as key actors in the development of adaptation and mitigation solutions. We educate and provide tools to the common citizens to be part of the solution. Through disruptive tools, art, technology, open data and a lot of creativity every citizen can engage and be part of the solution. If we add to the climate governance a decentralized path where every community through its collective intelligence develop their own solutions oriented to regenerate their territories and build resilience with a cooperative effort from the public and private sector as well as other stakeholders, we can have a bigger global community of problem solvers. That is what we look for. Educating and empower individual to change behaviors and collaborate to develop collective solutions in their territories. The sum of all of these communities connected, collaborating and exchanging knowledge can bring a necessary transformations at a social, political and economic level for tackling climate change.

Cities generate 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions it means the potential for solutions to tackle climate change in cities are enormous, however, citizens are not included in climate governance. 

Low Carbon City, wants to engage and empower citizens in climate action and for that we educate people for using creative and participatory and artistic tools to enhance climate friendly lifestyles; we connect citizens and experts to exchange knowledge to create solutions; and we create and implement solutions with communities and organizations. Through our work we expect to mobilize 1 million people, reach 500 cities in a network of ambassadors coordinating solutions; and 500 scalable solutions implemented for building resilience and reducing emissions. 

This work, will lead to increase the participation of citizens in climate governance as well as reducing its carbon footprint, the promotion of collective efforts lead by citizens, tackling climate change, and the development of public policies and plans for climate mitigation in cities. 

The impact overall is a global community of citizens  changing behaviors and impacting their communities living in low carbon regenerative and resilient cities, building collective solutions. (breathable air, green spaces, sustainable mobility, zero waste, local food)

We asume that our solutions are evidence driven and scalable, our interventions have a broad impact in public policies, and we engage all stakeholders (communities, individuals, government, private sector, universities, media, NGO, among others.)

Since 2015, we have mobilized 48.067 citizens, generating a network of 120 ambassador cities in 34 countries. We have developed 568 forums, workshops, projects and urban interventions, 4 World Low Carbon City Forums, with the fifth edition returning to Medellin in September 2020. Additionally, we have a network of more than 800 experts from 73 countries, mobilized 564 volunteers, are part of 10 international networks, and have enacted three large advocacy and policy tools. 

Currently, in 2020, we have mobilized 28.900 citizens, we have developed 20 different actions actions.

In one year, we hope to mobilize 200.000 more citizens through our annual forums, and new project developments, especially one that seek to impact the education system in Colombia, ad develop +100 climate actions.

In five years, we hope to have mobilized one million citizens in 500 cities around the world 

• Target: Mobilize around one million  citizens for climate action in 5 years 

• Sustainable Solutions: Collect over 500 low-cost, scalable solutions for low-carbon and resilient cities. 

• Regenerative Neighborhoods: Expand the “Low Carbon regenerative and resilient Neighborhoods” to 10 cities by integrating four structural areas: Energy, Transportation, Waste and Urban Agriculture, with resilience and regenerative principles.

• Multi-stakeholder Network: Grow our multi-stakeholder network to more than 500 cities across the globe, by developing a sustainable model that allows increasing activities and impacts and sensitizes 1 million citizens. 

• Knowledge Management: Operate an online tool to improve opportunities for knowledge exchange and networking.

• Advocacy at the International Level: Position the Low Carbon City World Forum on the world agenda as the stage for citizen debate on climate change and bring the results and voices of citizens to the next UNFCCC COPs and international forums and debates on climate. We want to become the ‘citizen partner’ of city networks that address climate change like C40 or Global Covenant of Mayors. 

• Geographical Objective: Increase the scope of our interventions beyond LATAM and the Caribbean to other developing cities in the world, prioritizing those that are more carbon intensive and highly vulnerable to climate change. 

Challenge of mobilizing citizens in a digital world: How can we educate citizens, co-create sustainable solutions and connect with our network in a digital world? This has become an even greater challenge after Covid-19. It is essential that we upgrade our pedagogical tools and project management skills to incorporate new digital interactive learning methods. 

Evaluation and Monitoring Tools: We partner with universities in generating research from our work, developing practical elements that are then implemented in our pedagogical model. However we still notice a lack of good monitoring and evaluation tools we can use to guide our research and practical implementations. This monitoring deficiency limits our efforts in measuring the exact impact each community is having in their own projects. 

Scaling up and Financial Capacity: To extend our impact we need to ensure our operational budget. Although we have a business model that seeks for generating the basic resources to operate, every time we open new doors, and new communities or cities join us it demands more technical resources from us to answer to those new demands, and not always those demands can be answered through our guidelines, publications or volunteers. It need to strengthening our team and operational capabilities. 

• Mobilizing citizens in a digital world: For this barrier, we can pursue specialized online trainings in new educational strategies such as the ‘project-based-learning’ or Project Zero system. By learning how to bridge our project management skills with education and art on both a real-life and online platform, we can refine our climate awareness methods and design learning experiences that are effective, engaging and empowering. 

• Evaluation Tools: We wish to refine our evaluation and monitoring tools and knowledge through participating in a theory of change online training offered by Bond UK Network. By learning how monitoring and evaluation tools interact with theory of change impacts, we hope to generate improved accuracy and comparisons across climate topics. 

• Financial Capacity: We would like to explore a possibility of developing a social franchise. That way we can expand in a more sustainable way, ensuring we meet the requirement and demands of those new territories that join us.

Community actors: we identify leaders of communities in which and we work together with them, diagnosing and designing solutions. These leaders are our bridge with the community and help us to summon other neighbors who are interested in participating. We also help leverage their ideas and projects to make them come true. 

Civil society actors: we identify and accompany existing initiatives and promote spaces to disseminate their knowledge. We are also looking for successful experiences that can be implemented within our network. 

Government actors: We try to generate inputs for the generation of public policies, through our actions. Likewise, we collaborate in some of our actions to increase the impact. We maintain a constant dialogue, from conversations to activism actions. 

Academic actors: We join universities in generating research from our work, and involve practical elements through our projects in the pedagogical model. Students are linked from their subjects to the development of solutions together with our stakeholders. Then these solutions become real solutions that are implemented. They are also our allies in promoting events, meetings and other awareness-raising spaces. And they contribute their expertise in our citizen discussions. 

Private actors: We sale services related to our mission to the private sector, that way we have developed a business model to support our work. We also partner to develop project that can help the to engage their own communities in climate action.

Strategic partnerships: INCYCLO, for the measurement of our carbon footprint and Climate Trade, for offsetting our carbon footprint. 

We have developed a portfolio of services tailored to the public, social and private sector. These services include hosting of events and workshops to educate citizens, creative climate communication campaigns, climate change policies plans for companies and the construction of Low Carbon and resilient Neighborhoods along with the public sector. We sale the portfolio and the revenue help us to fund our strategies. Since we started we have developed a network of 42 strategic partners including international organizations, universities, private companies, NGOs and the public sector. 

Our sources of funding are based on our portfolio of services and eventual grants or donations we get from international donors.

Since our creation some of our international partners have included AFD, CAF (Latin American Development Bank), USAID, Ecocity Builders, Echoing Green, Ashoka, Pollination Project, Avina Foundation. Those partners support us with financial and in-kind contributions, and also hire us to develop the aforementioned projects. During the last year we have gotten a revenue of 39.000 USD from Microsoft, Comfama, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Universidad Autónoma de Manizales, ISA, Sistemas Inteligentes en Red, Ecoregistry, Fundación Argos and a total of grants of USD 30.000 coming from Fondo Acción, Echoing Green, Fundación Ciudad Emergente, Choucair Testing, Global Giving, Corporación Amarillo, Lavaquina, EAFIT.

I’m looking for USD 110.000 grant that allow me to ensure my operation for the rest of 2020 and 2021. That way I could focus on the improvement of my strategy, the scaling up of the ambassador strategy and consolidating my portfolio of services that accelerate the impact and the organizations. If I can focus better in the strategy that in fundraising right now I could accelerate the impact. 

77.000 USD

Engaging with the Solve community is my main motivation. Having the opportunity to exchange experiences with other community members, receive support from experts that enable our project to scale-up globally and have a greater impact. In terms of capacity building and support from expert, I love to have mentoring and have access to experts that support our work in terms digital tools, how to bring more technology to our work and new digital elements, and how to incorporate it in our strategies and educational strategies, specifically during the Covid and post pandemia. I also love to get insights and learnings on new evaluation tools, to refine our evaluation and monitoring tools.  

Support in terms of funding and connections with potential partners can also contribute with our strategy. We are looking for 110.000 USD for the next years to scale up our impact and ensure we can focus in improving our strategy. 

To have visibility and international exposure is also a very important action that could add value and credibility to all the actions we develop.