Resilient Cities 2017, the 8th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation (RC2017) took place in Bonn, Germany, on 4-6 May. The congress brought together local leaders, academics, civil society and business leaders from around 50 countries. EUROCLIMA and Adapt-Chile participated presenting the results of their strategic partnership for local climate change planning.
Partnerships at all levels are key to build resilience and to face the challenges of climate change. Resilient Cities 2017 provided a forum for key stakeholders to coordinate initiatives, join efforts and build coalitions for integrated resilience planning at local level.
As part of the event, EUROCLIMA and Adapt-Chile participated presenting the results of their partnership for local climate action including the recently published Thematic Studies 11 & 12 and a board game that simulates local climate challenges. The interactive methodologies and tools of the Climate Change Academies, which are developed by Adapt-Chile with support of EUROCLIMA, raised a lot of interest among the participants of the congress.
Some of the highlights of RC2017 included:
1. The Insurance Industry & Cities Summit, which gathered city leaders, civil servants and representatives from some of the leading global insurance companies and risk management consultancies. The main aim was to shape and drive a new agenda for the cooperation of local governments and the insurance industry to foster advanced planning for local resilience. This Summit was sponsored by Munich RE and organized by ICLEI and UN Environment's Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI) Initiative who have joined forces to create the largest collaboration between the insurance industry and cities. More information at: http://resilientcities2017.iclei.org/program/insuring-sustainable-and- resilient-cities-summit/
2. The Urban Food Forum, organized by ICLEI and RUAF with technical support from FAO, addressed city-region food systems planning, a topic increasingly on the sustainable development agenda. The Forum included a session on the exchange of good practices as well as one on “Tools and methods for city-region food system assessment and planning”, including the presentation of the CITYFOOD network, created in response to requests for training, technical advice and city-to-city exchange. More information at: http://resilientcities2017.iclei.org/program/urban-food-forum/
3. Edmonton (Canada) has been announced as host city for theIPCC 2018 Cities and Climate Change Science Conference.
The Resilient Cities 2017 Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation (RC2017) was organized by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and hosted by the City of Bonn. It served as the annual global platform for knowledge exchange, robust debate, innovative thinking and strategy development on urban resilience and climate change adaptation. It was also the premier reporting platform for tracking local progress on the resilience targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.
About 400 participants participated; among them were 107 representatives of 60 different local governments from 37 different countries. More information about the cities that took part at: http://resilientcities2017.iclei.org/about/cities-at-the-congress/
