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Letter from David Jácome Polit, Chief Resilience Officer of Quito – March 2017

Dear ICLEI friends and colleagues, We live in a highly dynamic world. Along with our changing climate, social, technological, economic, demographic and ecological conditions are evolving, often at record pace. Resilience thinking is essential to understanding these forces and finding solutions for their effects. The Municipality of Quito has begun to make major transformations using 

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Letter from Gino Van Begin – January

Dear ICLEI friends and colleagues, Local and subnational governments have proven to be a reliable force for positive global change. Now, in 2017, it is vital that we push to make the trend towards sustainable development irreversible. We aim to do so through our actions on the ground, efforts to shape global policy and events 

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Climate compatible development starts with finding the right partners

Alice Reil of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability rounds up lively discussions about ‘how to make climate compatible development happen’ at local and city level from the Resilient Cities 2016 congress and CDKN-ICLEI learning program. This blog post was originally published on CDKN website. Identifying adaptation options for a more sustainable tourism along the vulnerable coast of Belize. 

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What we learned at Resilient Cities 2016

Resilience is about people more than anything else. For every database, for every project, there is always a human interface: the civil servants, community leaders and regular citizens making resilience a reality. This was a red thread along the whole Resilient Cities 2016 congress, which wrapped up today in Bonn after three days of intense, 

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There is no cohesion without social protection

by Lauren Stabler, PhD student at the Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University Alfredo Zamudio, Director of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue, issued an inspirational call to action at today’s special feature plenary. Mr. Zamudio began his keynote speech with a personal account of his experience as an unaccompanied minor at age 13, after being 

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Small island states: overlooked but highly vulnerable

The number of climate change-related events is rapidly increasing, and Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) are highly vulnerable. In 2013, Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was hit by a major flash flood that damaged informal settlements built in high-risk areas. In 2015, a huge cyclone destroyed big parts of Port Vila, the capital of 

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Cities and their food: a relationship below the radar?

by David Lammers, MSc Environmental Studies and Sustainability Studies, Lund University The goal of making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable is anchored within the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG11), and so is achieving food security (SDG2). The interrelation between these two goals was the central focus of the “Resilient urban food systems: city progress” session co-organized by RUAF Foundation, 

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When city met finance: how to fund and build resilient infrastructure in emerging economies

Seventy-five percent of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has not been built yet, according to Global Infrastructure Basel. So, how can we ensure that this infrastructure gets financed and built in a way that factors in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues? Cities in emerging economies, particularly in Africa, face numerous challenges in 

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A resilient city doesn’t stop at flood gates

by Lauren Stabler, PhD student at the Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University In this afternoon’s session “Inclusive governance: partnering with communities and marginalized groups”, representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Labour Organization, Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and IIED made a strong case for inclusivity, from which four key lessons can 

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“For the urban poor, nothing trumps location”

More than 200 million people in Africa live in slums, making it a major issue for cities growing at a rapid pace. With the Sustainable Development Goals – in particular SDG 1 and SDG 11 – national and local governments are looking for new ways to build inclusive and resilient cities for all, including the urban 

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