Local Governments for Sustainability and partners have unveiled an initiative to catapult urban resilience action worldwide at the Rio+20 Global Town Hall.
United States Green Building Vice President Dr Jason Hartke said the Secretary General’s High-Level Panel makes clear that the protean concept of resilience cuts across all issues and sectors, and provides a new and vital dimension to the cause of sustainable development.
Acting as a leadership group on this important dimension of the challenge, ICLEI; the US Green Building Council; the Eye on Earth Summit; the World Bank Group; the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group; the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Program on Energy, Resources; and the Environment, and the Earth Council Alliance Rio de Janeiro Office are raising the flag on the urban resiliency movement around the world.
The GIUR will focus on eight key areas, but will refine its reach as innovative ideas emerge:
- Convene a core group of organizations that will coordinate the stakeholders to provide global reach and dimension to the initiative
- Encourage a resiliency dimension to the green building movement
- Take a whole-of-urban government approach
- Develop new incentives for budget action on resilience by local governments around the world
- Build awareness of resilience as an indispensable precondition to sustainable development
- Develop harmonized metrics for success to better achieve milestones and outcomes
- Integrate geographic information systems and geospatial infrastructure into planning and budget decisions
- Integrate systems for natural capital accounting, avoiding losses and reducing costs associated with shocks and disasters
