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www.habitat3.org
Twitter: @Habitat3UN

The Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project International Project Office, along with members of the UGEC Scientific Steering Committee and our extended network participated in and attended multiple events throughout the course of the conference which are listed below.

Click here to read the UGEC response to the Habitat III Issue Papers

Events

Monday, October 17

An Urban Planet: Book pre-Launch
Organizers: Future Earth, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project
Location: The National Assembly, Area B, Booth #27: Future Earth/ICSU/Potsdam Institute
Time: 14:30 – 16:00
Description: This event will present ‘Urban Planet’, an edited volume including transdisciplinary perspectives of urbanization and the environment that offers new knowledge for sustainability and resilience in the era of global urbanization. The scale and pace of global urbanization is increasingly influencing the Earth System, with multiple consequences for global change outcomes and sustainability. There is, however, a surprising lack of common understanding among scientific disciplines and among urban stakeholders on the outcomes of global urbanization processes and the dynamics of complex urban systems. Since our urban future will determine the viability and vitality of the human endeavor toward global sustainability, greater integration of knowledge and deeper understanding of urbanization processes and the multi-scale interactions and feedbacks with the Earth system is required.

The book, which is a Future Earth Initiative, will be published as an open access book by Cambridge University Press in 2017.

Tuesday, October 18

Convergence of Governance and Finance in Implementing the New Urban Agenda
Organizer: USAID
Location: Room MR16 – Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamin Carrion”
Time: 14:00 – 16:00
Description: The Quito Declaration of the New Urban Agenda calls for the adoption of policies and actions based on fundamental drivers of change including by “supporting effective, innovative, and sustainable financing frameworks and instruments, enabling strengthened municipal finance and local fiscal systems in order to create, sustain, and share the value generated by sustainable urban development in an inclusive manner.” How effectively the global community is able to deliver on the New Urban Agenda therefore depends on the mobilization of all sources of finance—including private investment, domestic resources, and development cooperation—and the ability of governments at all levels to translate revenue into inclusive and sustainable models of delivering basic services that provide large-scale benefits to urban residents in a sustainable manner over the long-term.

We have learned many lessons about how governments, the private sector, and development agencies can to work together to finance and promote sustainable urbanization. We have also seen that even promising approaches to mobilizing and effectively using resources for urban development can be derailed by unforeseen challenges. To make meaningful progress on the New Urban Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, all actors will need to build on past lessons and identify innovative ways to foster an enabling environment that can mobilize and effectively deploy all sources of finance for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable service delivery.

Representatives from USAID and the U.S. Government will facilitate this session with participation from mayors of four cities across the developed and developing world.

The Lancet series on Urban Design, Transport, and Population Health
Organizers: The University of Melbourne, Australia
Location: Urban Library
Time: 17:00 – 17:45
Description: Major global health challenges are being confronted in the 21st century, prompting calls to re-think approaches to disease prevention. City planning that reduces non-communicable diseases and road trauma, while managing rapid urbanisation is part of the solution. The recently-launched Lancet series on Urban Design, Transport and Population Health, focuses on the health impacts of city planning through transport mode options and choices. Authored by researchers around the world, the three papers unravel the complexity of urban design, the transport system and population health and provide a paradigm shift in our approach to responding to the growing burden of chronic disease and injury in our cities. The series offers key recommendations that urban and transport planners and policymakers could implement to improve the health of urban populations.

At this event, researchers involved in The Lancet series will provide an outline of the three research papers on urban design, transport and health and the Lancet Series will be available in the Library for attendees.

Wednesday, October 19

Innovations in Slum Upgrading: New Participatory Technologies for Redeveloping Informal Settlements
Organizers/Participants: Santa Fe Institute, The University of Texas-Austin,The United States National Science Foundation,Shack/Slum-Dwellers International, União de Nucleos e Associações de Sacomã (UNAS), School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Zeladoria Ambiental (Environmental Stewards), Jardim São Francisco
Location: Room MR16 – Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamin Carrion”
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Description: This event will describe processes of slum upgrading in Brazil, South Africa, India, and other Sub-Saharan African Cities. We will show how traditional participatory processes of slum upgrading are being increasingly facilitated and formalized by new technologies that advance participatory spatial analytic techniques for collaborative planning. We will also show how such instruments – developed through collaborations between communities, governments, NGOs, researchers and technologists – can increase the efficacy of resulting solutions by helping local stakeholders solve technical problems and promote decision-making processes between communities and governments.

Building Urban Resilience to Extreme Events: Lessons Across Cultures
Organizers: Nancy Grimm, Arizona State University, USA; Timon McPhearson, The New School, USA; Thomas Elmqvist, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden
Panelists: Charles Redman, Arizona State University, USA; Erik Andersson, Sweden; Xuemei Bai, The Australian National University, Australia; Richard Dawson, Newcastle University, UK
Location: The National Assembly, Area B, Booth #27: Future Earth/ICSU/Potsdam Institute
Time: 14:30 – 15:30

Creating Research and Practice Connections for Livable Cities: Stories, Challenges and Lessons from the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project
Organizers: The Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project
Panelists: Rimjhim Aggarwal, Arizona State University, USA; Corrie Griffith, UGEC Project, USA (moderator, speaker); Darryn McEvoy, RMIT University, Australia; Patricia Romero Lankao, National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA; Shuaib Lwasa, Makerere University, Uganda; David Simon, Urban Mistra Futures, Sweden
Location: The National Assembly, Area B, Booth #27: Future Earth/ICSU/Potsdam Institute
Time: 16:00 – 17:30
Description: Join us as a panel from the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change (UGEC) project research and practice community reflects on experiences from over a decade of project operations. Panelists will share stories of urbanization and environmental challenges (and opportunities!) unique to the Americas, India and China, Asia-Pacific/SE Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The discussion will focus on co-production of knowledge for just and livable cities, climate adaptation and resilience planning efforts, the need for human rights linked to water governance, and much more. Finally, there will be an open dialogue with the audience to explore how research-policy-practice communities can better connect and produce innovative solutions to implement the New Urban Agenda across regions.

Thursday, October 20

Harnessing sustainable urbanisation for human and planetary health
Location: UN Pavilion Room A
Time: 8:30 – 10:30

Climate Resilient Urbanization for Pacific Islands Communities
Location: Room R8 – Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamin Carrion”
Time: 12:30 – 13:30
Description: Over the two decades since Habitat II urban populations in Pacific Islands Countries (PICs) have grown, on average, at twice the rate of their national populations. Driven largely by rural-to-urban migration, these emerging cities face a diverse array of economic, environmental and social issues, such as employment growth, affordable housing, inequality and demographic transformation. Interconnected with Pacific urbanization is the region’s high level of vulnerability to climate change, which threatens traditional livelihood resources, marine and low-lying island areas, and existing development goals such as health improvement and poverty alleviation.

This event will draw on contrasting examples of planning for climate resilient urbanization from across these Pacific small islands developing states, providing a platform for the region’s inputs to the New Urban Agenda and the Conference. It will showcase the outcomes of the fourth Pacific Urban Forum (PUF 4), held in Nadi, Fiji in March 2015, which concluded with a call to find sustainable solutions to the challenges of urbanization faced by towns, cities and urban centres in the Pacific region. Case study insights will be also provided by representatives of local government, academia, UN agencies and peak regional bodies.

The session will review some of the key regional themes and processes for implementing climate resilient urbanization, such as the mainstreaming of climate change into urbanization policies in Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and the Solomon Islands, and the profiling of hazard-prone informal settlements in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The potential role of regional knowledge sharing through forums, online platforms, and personnel exchanges will highlight opportunities for embedding the New Urban Agenda within the region’s development processes, and allowing implementation in one of the world’s most diverse, remote and climate vulnerable groups of nations.

Emerging innovative solutions to leapfrog towards urban sustainability in Africa
Organizer: Shuaib Lwasa, Makerere University
Panelists: Sonia Roitman (Queensland University), Richard Sliuzas (University of Twente), Hans Skote, Veronica Botero (Medellin University)
Location: Room MR13 – Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana “Benjamin Carrion”
Time: 14:00 – 16:00