Cities across the Asia-Pacific region are simultaneously engines of economic growth and epicenters of mounting challenges—rising resource consumption, growing waste, environmental degradation, and climate change. How can cities continue to grow and thrive while reducing resource use, minimizing waste, and building resilience? This is one of the defining questions of our time.
The key to answering it lies in the transition to a circular economy. This means going beyond waste management and recycling to fundamentally rethinking how materials are designed, produced, consumed, and recovered—transforming environmental challenges into opportunities for innovation and employment.
This report covers the session “City-to-City Cooperation Session: ACCD Signatory Cities and International Organizations Discuss Scaling the Circular Economy Through Inter-City Collaboration,” held at the APCC Forum. It features concrete initiatives from three cities—Bangkok, Makassar, and Cebu—supported by organizations including the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the City of Yokohama, alongside perspectives from development partners such as the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) and JICA on the essence of advancing the circular economy through city-to-city cooperation.
Strengthening Resilience Through City-to-City Cooperation
The session opened with Makoto Kato (加藤真), Director of the Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center (OECC), explaining the session’s purpose. He emphasized that the transition to a circular economy is essential for cities in the Asia-Pacific region to maintain growth and prosperity while building resilience in the face of serious challenges such as rising resource consumption and climate change.
Kato: “The circular economy is not just about waste management and recycling—it is about fundamentally rethinking how resources are designed, produced, consumed, and recovered. We need to transform environmental challenges into opportunities for innovation and employment.”
Partnerships have been established between Japanese cities, including the City of Yokohama, and cities across ASEAN nations, with the involvement of development partners such as international organizations, JICA, and ADBI. A key theme running throughout the session was the importance of moving beyond one-off projects to build institutional frameworks and effective governance structures that strengthen urban resilience more efficiently and sustainably.
City-to-City Partnerships Advancing the Visions of Three Cities
1. Bangkok, Thailand: Zero Carbon and the Circular Economy, Starting with a Master Plan
Representing Bangkok, Ratchada Maniwong, Chief of the Waste Management Services Section, Waste Management Strategy Division, Department of Environment, took the floor. Bangkok has maintained a long-standing city-to-city partnership with the City of Yokohama. This cooperation, based on the “City-to-City Cooperation Program for a Zero-Carbon Society,” has evolved to encompass the formulation and implementation of a Climate Change Master Plan, an Energy Action Plan, and a Waste and Wastewater Action Plan.
Bangkok is currently focused on accelerating its pathway toward net-zero emissions by 2050, with the transition to a circular economy as a central pillar of that effort.
Maniwong: “Our efforts begin with waste reduction and source separation, and extend to recycling, resource recovery, organic waste utilization, and waste-to-energy initiatives.”
Specific measures include the “No-Mix Waste” project and the BKK WASTE PAY app. By combining digital platforms with financial incentives, these initiatives encourage households to sort and collect valuables such as plastics, metals, paper, and glass at the source. Organic waste is converted into compost and biogas, while waste that cannot be recycled is used for power generation. Through these measures, Bangkok aims to reduce both landfill waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
2. Makassar, Indonesia: Advancing the Circular Economy Through Shared Identity as Waterfront Cities
Located at the heart of Indonesia and serving as a logistics hub for the eastern part of the country, Makassar is a maritime city of 1.5 million people with an economic growth rate of 6.61%. However, rapid urbanization has brought pressing challenges: urban flooding, increasing waste, and a high non-revenue water rate (the proportion of water lost to leakage and other causes before generating revenue) stemming from an aging water management system.
Andi Zulfitra Dianta (アンディ・ズルフィトラ・ディアンタ), Head of the Cooperation Division, noted that to address these challenges, Makassar has established a city-to-city partnership with Yokohama—a city that shares many characteristics, including its identity as a maritime city and logistics hub. The city is also collaborating with Maniwa City in Okayama Prefecture and Kawasaki City in Kanagawa Prefecture on circular economy initiatives and water management and flood control.
Dianta: “International city-to-city cooperation offers three key advantages in solving complex urban challenges: the exchange of knowledge and technology, access to co-financing opportunities, and the creation of new commercial markets, trade opportunities, and cultural connections.”
Through the partnership with Yokohama, the city is coordinating efforts to introduce solar power systems at battery-swap stations for electric motorcycles, conducting feasibility studies for battery-swappable electric buses, and preparing pilot demonstrations for the introduction of advanced-function garbage trucks. Dianta noted that city-to-city cooperation enables cities to share innovations, secure alternative funding, overcome challenges together, and accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
3. Cebu City, Philippines: The “Rising Above Waste” Project as a Response to Crisis
Home to approximately 1.2 million people, Cebu City in the Philippines has relied on landfill disposal for the 600 to 700 tonnes of waste it generates daily over the past 25 years. However, a succession of disasters—earthquakes, typhoons, and a landfill collapse—combined with the enormous costs of the conventional landfill-dependent model (approximately 2 million pesos, or around 5 million yen, per day) brought its limitations into sharp relief.
In response, Mayor Nestor Dionson Archival (ネスター・ディオンソン・アーチバル) is spearheading the “Rising Above Waste” project.
Mayor Archival: “We need to change our mindset. The old way is not sustainable—we are spending enormous sums every single day. That is why we are working to divert waste away from landfills by sorting it and routing it to eco-stations instead.”
Of Cebu City’s approximately 80 barangays (the smallest administrative units in the Philippines), 25 have already begun source separation (segregation). Engaging students and residents, the city converts collected biodegradable waste through a Black Soldier Fly bioeconomy—using the waste as feed for larvae, which are then processed into poultry feed and organic fertilizer, completing the cycle.
Collected PET bottles are mechanically processed and reused as materials for molding and fabrication, while single-use plastics are channeled to cement factories for use as an alternative fuel.
Cebu City has also signed the Asian Circular Cities Declaration (ACCD), of which the City of Yokohama is a founding city, and is working toward a vision of becoming a sustainable, smart, and inclusive city by 2035.
The Role of Development Partners in Connecting Cities and Supporting Cooperation
Next, Joy Blessilda Sinai (ジョイ・ブレッシルダ・シナイ), Specialist in the Human Development and Training Division at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), presented the institute’s capacity-building efforts through training programs for policymakers and urban administrators, as well as open self-learning platforms.
Sinai: “ADBI translates the findings from publications and case studies produced by its research division into capacity-building programs, supporting evidence-based policymaking. Because government fiscal resources alone are insufficient to address infrastructure investment and circular economy challenges, we are also developing programs that attract private sector expertise, financial institutions, and philanthropic foundations.”
She also emphasized the importance of platforms that enable cities to learn from one another through inter-city networks—sharing not only success stories but also lessons from failures—and that engage a diverse range of stakeholders.
Mikihiko Sugita (杉田樹彦), Deputy Director-General and Head of the Urban and Regional Development Group, Infrastructure and Peacebuilding Department at the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), highlighted how the nature of international cooperation has been shifting toward a more equal footing in recent years.
Sugita: “Since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, international cooperation has been moving away from the traditional ‘donor and recipient’ model—where one country teaches and the other learns—toward a more partnership-oriented approach. We want to support innovative solutions to challenges shared by Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, and work on them together as equal international partners.”
Sugita also expressed strong appreciation for city-to-city cooperation as a space that generates a virtuous cycle, where knowledge sharing between cities leads to mutual learning on shared regional agendas. He went on to highlight three specific points.
- Human Resource Development: Beyond technical cooperation and hands-on knowledge sharing, engaging younger generations and local leaders builds the human resources that underpin city-level cooperation.
- Collaboration with the Private Sector: A solid foundation of city-to-city cooperation gives Japanese companies, universities, and public institutions the confidence to participate. The collaboration between Makassar and Yokohama-based companies on electric buses is an excellent example of this.
- Expanding Regional Networks: Having moved through earlier phases of city-to-city cooperation in which recipient countries have now become partner countries, it is important to extend these experiences to other cities across the Asia-Pacific region.
In closing, Sugita commended Bangkok for treating its Climate Change Master Plan not as a mere formality, but as a “living document” actively embedded in daily practice with an eye toward 2035. He also noted that the history of cooperation built together by cities such as Cebu, the City of Yokohama, and JICA—spanning master plan development through to waste and water resource management—has become a solid foundation supporting today’s circular economy efforts.
Panel Discussion: From Learning to Co-Creation and Action
The panel discussion brought together representatives from the three cities and the moderator to explore concrete approaches and challenges for advancing city-to-city cooperation to the next level.
Mayor Archival of Cebu City identified “the lack of sustainability due to changes in political leadership” as the greatest challenge to project continuity.
Archival: “It is extremely difficult to keep a project going after a mayor’s term ends. That is precisely why we need ordinances and legislation that mandate the continuation of these projects—to ensure they are reliably passed on to the next generation.”
Dianta of Makassar also pointed to the impact of changes in political leadership. He added that the city is working to institutionalize projects by establishing a permanent dedicated division at the core of its cooperation efforts, and by incorporating local universities as partners—building a structure that can sustain itself independently even after support from donors and international organizations ends.
On the question of how to embed waste sorting and environmentally conscious behavior as lasting habits, Archival stressed the importance of “giving value to waste and attaching incentives to it.” In Cebu City, truck drivers and workers who collect sorted waste receive incentives such as rice, and unsorted waste is refused for collection—a rigorous on-the-ground approach that has been effective in securing residents’ cooperation.
It was also noted that replicating and scaling best practices from other cities requires sharing the results of initiatives as verifiable data. Moderator Kato further raised the potential of the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) under Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, which has been introduced between Japan and the Philippines and Thailand. The idea of channeling carbon credit revenues back to those engaged in environmental protection was presented as a potential incentive for advancing the circular economy.
Scaling the Circular Economy Across Asia-Pacific
This session demonstrated the potential of city-to-city cooperation as a practical solution to the environmental and climate challenges facing cities across the Asia-Pacific region. Four key takeaways emerged from the discussion.
- From Simple Imitation to “Equal Co-Creation Grounded in Local Reality”: Rather than copying another city’s model wholesale, it is essential to co-create solutions through pilot projects tailored to each city’s local context—whether that means its identity as a maritime city, its climate risks, or its fiscal capacity.
- Governance and Institutionalization (Ensuring Sustainability): The key to long-term success lies in embedding initiatives within institutional frameworks—treating master plans as “living documents” and enacting ordinances that mandate project continuity—so that progress is not derailed by changes in political leadership.
- Incentive Design and Engaging Diverse Stakeholders: Introducing economic and material incentives that drive behavioral change among residents (such as systems that give value to waste), alongside building multilayered partnerships that bring in universities, private companies, and international organizations.
- Data-Driven Knowledge Sharing and Diversified Financing: Leveraging knowledge platforms that accumulate and share data on both successes and failures, and diversifying funding through mechanisms such as private finance and the JCM (Joint Crediting Mechanism) rather than relying solely on public budgets.
The practical work accumulated by cities such as Bangkok, Makassar, and Cebu—together with the City of Yokohama and international organizations—is serving as a reliable beacon illuminating the future of the circular economy and sustainable urban development across the Asia-Pacific region.
Looking ahead, the mechanism that will enable Asian cities to elevate the circular economy from a lofty ideal to an implementable reality lies in equal, non-unidirectional partnerships—ones in which each city’s knowledge and financial foundations are combined with the efforts of practitioners and residents who are doing the hard work on the ground.
【Reference Article】City-to-City Partnerships Driving the Circular Economy Across Asia-Pacific: Bangkok, Makassar, and Cebu’s Real Progress [APCC2026 Report] | Circular Economy Hub
【Reference Site】Asia-Pacific Circular Cities Forum 2026
【Related Article】A Circular Economy Starting from Cities: Asia-Pacific Takes Its First Steps from Declaration to Action [APCC2026 Report]
【Related Article】Asia-Pacific Tackles Plastic Pollution: The Future of the International Treaty and Practical Insights from Cities and Local Governments [APCC2026 Report]
※This article is republished from Circular Economy Hub, operated by Article Inc. (アーティクル株式会社).
