New global collaboration for urban resilience announced

Nine of the world’s largest UN and non-UN organisations have joined forces to form the ‘Medellin Collaboration on Urban Resilience’ to help build urban resilience and to strengthen the social, economic and environmental fabric of the world’s urban spaces.

Announced on the last day of the 7^th World Urban Forum in Medellin, Colombia, the group includes UN-Habitat, UNISDR, The World Bank Group, Rockefeller Foundation, C40 Cities, ICLEI, 100 Resilient Cities, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery.

“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 Sameh Wahba, Acting Director of the World Bank’s Urban Development and Resilience Department.

The group, collectively, works in over 2,000 cities with more than US$2 billion of funding committed annually toward advancing resilient and sustainable urban growth and development.

“We are pleased to be participating in this collaboration, which will improve alignment amongst approaches to city resilience, maximising the impact of resources and allowing sharing of successes,” said Eduardo Paes, Mayor of Rio De Janeiro and the Chair of C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

The primary objectives of the collaboration are:

• Fostering harmonisation of the approaches and tools available to help cities build their resilience;
• Catalysing access to existing and innovative finance mechanisms, including risk-based instruments to reduce exposure and vulnerability to shocks and increase cities’ adaptive capacity;
• Supporting capacity development of cities, direct sharing of best practice and knowledge enhancement; and
• Forging alliances with urban networks, institutions, and the private sector.

“The global initiative announced in Medellin is fully in line with ICLEI´s ‘Resilient City Agenda’,” said Gino Van Begin, Secretary-General of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. “This agenda aims to support cities to reduce their vulnerability by building on their capacity to respond to climate change challenges, disasters and economic shocks.”

The collaboration will mobilise support for the post-2015 urban resilience agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals, a new universal climate change framework, a new global agreement on disaster risk reduction to succeed the Hyogo Framework for Action, and the Habitat III agenda.