21 January 2010

During the event "Global Dialogue Series: Mayor's Roundtable" organised by the Worldbank Institute (WBI), mayors and city representatives from Jakarta, Dar es Salaam, São Paulo, Mexico City, and Toronto framed and led a two-hour interactive video dialogue on urban poverty and climate change.

Following the Climate Summit for Mayors that took place during COP 15 in Copenhagen, World Bank Group President Bob Zoellick stressed the importance of the topic: “This work with a group of mayors needs to be a real priority of ours,” said Zoellick during the sessions. “Cities present enormous growth and development opportunities. We’re trying to see how some of the poor areas of cities, and particularly slum areas, can be upgraded from both an economic development point of view and also a climate change point,” he added.  

“Cities are the leaders in both mitigation – the reducing of greenhouse gases – and adaptation. The most exposed are the poor who live in urban areas, because they live in the most marginalized parts of every city,” emphasized David Cadman, President of ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability.

The mayors agreed to join a new task force with Mexico City’s Mayor Ebrard as lead convenor. “We are very happy to actively support this task force,” said Abha Joshi-Ghani, Manager, Urban Development and Local Government. “The task force will focus on three aspects: take stock of our understanding of the linkages between urban poverty and climate change, identify good practices on how to improve urban poverty while reducing climate vulnerability, and promote investment programs that can scale up good practices.” “The mayors’ commitment to engage in this task force on urban poverty and climate change was truly inspiring. WBI will support the new task force in achieving tangible results by the time of the next Climate Conference in Mexico,” concluded Konrad von Ritter, Manager of WBI’s Climate Change Practice.

This video conference during the Sustainable Development Network (SDN) Forum launched a new WBI Global Dialogue Series: The Road from Copenhagen to Mexico. The series creates a platform for South-South learning, allowing mayors and other decision-makers to exchange innovations, proven concepts, and new ideas. More global dialogues are planned for the coming months, focusing on such themes as parliamentarians and climate change, youth and climate change. Read more…