World Cities Summit Mayors Forum ends with sustainability declaration

Mayors and city leaders reinforced their commitment to sustainable development and environmental reform by signing a policy declaration at the 2015 World Cities Summit Mayors Forum (WCS) held in Manhattan, New York.

The sixth WCS Mayors Forum, an elite round table forum designed to find solutions to urban challenges, attracted 80 city leaders ranging from Dr Bilal Hamad, the Mayor of Beirut to Rosario Crocetta, the Mayor of Sicily and from Patricia de Lille, Mayor of Cape Town to Ibon Areso, the Mayor of Bilbao.

Keynote speakers at the event, held at the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan, included Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York, UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson and Desmond Lee, the Singapore Minister of State for National Development.

For the first time the WCS Mayors Forum issued a declaration committing attendees to policies promoting sustainability which include affordable home provision and building more accessible transport networks.

The declaration will be submitted to the United Nations and it is hoped that it will influence the UN’s agenda for its conference on sustainable urban development to be held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016.

Mr Lee said, “We see this declaration, in a way, as an affirmation of what we’ve been doing in Singapore and the fact that it’s being endorsed by these other mayors does show this is the way to go for cities around the world.”

De Blasio opened the forum–which this year had the theme ‘Liveable and Sustainable Cities: Innovative Cities of Opportunity’–with a re-affirmation of his recently-unveiled One NYC plan that claims to be a fairer upgrade on his predecessor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC.

One NYC pledges to bring 800,000 New Yorkers out of poverty in a decade, cut the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and end landfill waste by 2030.

De Blasio told the forum: “The reality of governance is changing because the pertinence of cities is greater with every passing year. We are in fact the spark of change, we are the centre, the focal point more than ever before in history.”

De Blasio said the role of the mayor was even more important in an era of rising disillusionment with national governments: “We become the bright, shining lights, the actual leaders willing to accept challenges, to talk about them bluntly and honestly with other people, to show people even amid the complexities, that there are real and tangible solutions.”

The WCS Mayors forum is organised by Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. The WCS is held biannually in Singapore.

Speaking on day two of the forum, UN Deputy Secretary General Eliasson said: “If cities join forces with governments, the private sector, civil society and urban planners, they can become the hubs for climate and development solutions.

“Urbanisation can be a transformative force for the sustainable development goals by making cities and human settlements safe, resilient and sustainable.

“The leaders who best adapt to this demographic and cultural shift will be the ones whose cities will be more economically viable, more environmentally sustainable and more socially vibrant.

“2015 is a milestone year for global sustainable development.” Mr Eliasson cited as forthcoming evidence for this the UN’s Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa, the UN Sustainable Development Goals summit in New York in September and the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December.

While in New York, mayors were given tours of New York’s waterfront, downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City.