Global commitment to support urban resilience
Nine institutions including the World Bank and the Global Facility
for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) recorded a new global
collaboration at the World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia, expressing
their collective commitment to help cities improve resilience to
disaster and climate risks, and to economic and other systemic shocks.
 “This collaboration across organisations is a significant step
towards facilitating the flow of additional financing to cities and
ultimately ensuring that shocks to the urban system don't undermine
decades of economic growth and prosperity,” said acting director of the
World Bank's Urban Development and Resilience Department, Sameh
Wahba.Strengthened collaboration among partners – UN Human Settlements
Program (UN-Habitat), UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR),
Inter-American Development Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, and its 100
Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership
Group, and ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability, in addition to
the Bank and GFDRR – aims at improving the flow of knowledge and
financial resources necessary to help cities become more resilient by:
Fostering harmonisation of the multiple approaches and tools available
to help cities build their resilience; Catalysing access to innovative
finance mechanisms, including risk-based instruments that will enhance
cities’ ability to reduce exposure and vulnerability to shocks and
stresses and increase their adaptive capacity and Supporting capacity
development of cities to achieve their goals by facilitating direct
sharing of best practice information and cities’ knowledge enhancement.
Collectively, these organisations work in over 2,000 cities globally,
with over $2 billion committed annually toward advancing resilient urban
development.
This collaboration across organisations is a significant step towards
facilitating the flow of additional financing to cities and ultimately
ensuring that shocks to the urban system don't undermine decades of
economic growth and prosperity.
The partnership will also mobilise support for the post-2015 urban
resilience agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the
climate change framework and the Hyogo Framework for Action, and the
Habitat III agenda.
In a rapidly urbanising world, people and assets are increasingly
concentrated in cities, becoming highly dependent on infrastructure
networks, communication systems, supply chains and utility connections.
While this enables cities to drive prosperity, disruptions caused by
natural disasters, the impacts of climate change, as well as a broad
range of shocks – economic, health epidemics, conflict or social
upheaval – can have a catastrophic effect on a city’s ability to deliver
basic services, hurting the lives of urban residents, especially the
poor and vulnerable.
At the World Urban Forum, the World Bank joined partners in a
discussion on the increasing importance of improving urban resilience,
and the need to move beyond conventional approaches through enhanced
collaboration.
Commenting on the partnership, Deputy Mayor of Barcelona, Antonio
Vives, said, “Speaking on behalf of the City of Barcelona, which shares
a relationship with all of these organisations; we welcome the
establishment of this partnership.
The collaboration will provide more coherence, collate more
resources, and offer more options to cities around the world to find the
most appropriate means to measure, monitor, and increase their
resilience.”
- World Bank |
