Pandemic responses and climate action recognised in Guangzhou Awards

This year’s Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation winners are Chongqing, China; the Union of Dannieh Municipalities, Lebanon; Quito, Ecuador; Saint Louis, Senegal; and Vienna, Austria.

From 273 submissions and 15 finalists, the judges said the winning projects “stood out for their ability to stimulate new policies and strategies, form new partnerships engaging with multi-sector stakeholders and employ technology to their advantage.”

Chongqing, which has a population of around 31 million, won an award for its innovative approach to the disposal of pandemic-related medical waste. When COVID-19 emerged, Chongqing activated its “Level 3 Emergency Mechanism” for medical waste, including novel technology and strict supervision processes for hospitals. This provided the city of Chongqing with a medical waste disposal capacity of 90 tonnes per day. It also led to the development of an emergency medical waste disposal centre in Wuhan to serve 388 hospitals in the city.

Lebanon faced many economic and political difficulties even before COVID-19, including a nationwide freeze on public sector hiring. During the pandemic, The Union of Dannieh Municipalities, which brings together 17 municipalities, established an Emergency Response Plan with committees of highly educated youth volunteers. They used social media and other tools to reach citizens and connect those in need to available community resources. The initiative has grown substantially since the beginning of the crisis and can be replicated within the country and the region, the judges said.

Climate focus

Quito in Ecuador won an award for its efforts to promote transit-oriented development and land value capture as a form of project financing. The Eco-Efficiency Ordinance for the Metropolitan District of Quito, passed in 2016 in anticipation of the inauguration of the city’s 13-mile metro, incentivises the construction of high-density sustainable buildings on key transport nodes and with provisions for affordable housing. The Ordinance also provides for land value capture to ensure that the city retains a financial share of increments generated by greater density and land use allowances in designated zones. The City of Quito calculates that it has generated approximately US$10.7 million in revenue from the sale of development rights.

The Departmental Council of Saint Louis in Senegal was recognised for its inter-municipal approach to safeguard mangrove ecosystems. Mangrove restoration activities are important to global climate action as they sequester carbon at a rate two to four times greater than mature tropical forests and store three to five times more carbon per equivalent area than tropical forests like the Amazon rainforest.

Prior to the start of the initiative, local elected officials had not sufficiently integrated mangrove protection into their local sustainable development policies. In addition, the community-based conservation initiatives were not coordinated, and urban development strategies did not allow the mangrove ecosystem to play its role.

Over the nine years of the intervention, more than 50 hectares of mangrove have been regenerated, which is calculated to be equivalent to a sequestration rate of 350 tonnes of carbon annually. The mangrove growth rate has risen to seven percent per year and the clearance rate is down by 25 percent. Nearly 80,000 people from over 50 organisations were involved in the initiative, representing local authorities, academics, and environmental experts.

Citizen engagement

Vienna won an award for its Werkstadt Junges Wien initiative to make Vienna the most child- and youth-friendly city in the world. It aims to enable children and young people of all age groups and backgrounds to connect to a process where they can freely articulate their own ideas for the city. As a result, there have been 193 specific measures and actions taken across the city. The strategy has been adopted by the Vienna City Council and thus is a binding commitment.

This is the fifth edition of the Guangzhou Awards.