Shifting towards resilient urban development

The Paris Agreement establishes a clear goal: to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius, with the intent to pursue a 1.5-degree target. However, the national climate commitments submitted under the Paris Agreement do not yet put us on track to achieve this goal. In fact, with current national commitments, the world is on its way towards a global temperature rise of around 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

This means that climate change is a reality and that cities need to prepare for its effects, working quickly to strengthen their resilience. While the climate conversation often focuses on mitigation, local resilience building is an essential dimension of the broader conversation.

ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability organized a half-day urban resilience event at Habitat III to bring this topic to the fore. The event convened global and local actors to discuss effective examples of resilience, options for multilevel cooperation, financing resilience and other issues that will help ensure tangible progress on resilience is made under the New Urban Agenda.

Here are some of the highlights from the first panel with Esteban Leon, Chief Technical Advisor of the City Resilience Profiling Program at UN-Habitat and David Jácome, Chief Resilience Officer at City of Quito:

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Their discussion was followed by a conversation with Josef Leitmann, Team Leader of Urban Resilience at the World Bank.

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