The Resilient Cities Congress, held in Bonn, Germany, and convened by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability – brought together local government representatives, academia, civil society, journalists and international organizations to advance the resilience agenda and forge synergies for action.
During the opening plenary, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called on participants to, “Work with each other here and through the many cooperative initiatives available to cities. Work with the local business community and the finance industry and academia. Work with your national governments – not just the environment ministry, but also energy, land use, transportation and finance ministries.”
UN-Habitat held a training session on the City Resilience Profiling Tool, attended by local government representatives from as far off as Mexico, Turkey and Fiji. The special guest was the Mayor of Pemba, Mozambique, Tagir Assimo Carimo who gave a testimony of the challenge and actions being taken in the coastal city to address climate change and build resilience. The participants (+30) were introduced to the CRPT approach and invited to create a city resilience snapshot of their city and complete a short exercise on the climate risks their city is likely to face. The exercises highlighted that the information required to make informed decisions on resilience is often spread across different institutions working in the city and building resilience therefore requires engagement and collaboration in a collective effort.
Image: Mayor of Pemba, Mozambique.
Throughout the congress, local government staff and their partners highlighted cyber security as a growing risk faced by the local level and a particularly challenging one to address given their often limited capacity and resources for this task. The collaboration between municipalities and insurance companies to share loss data was also a recurring theme in a number of sessions.
Latest news from ICLEI about the Resilient Cities Congress
