Public Relations
Resilient Cities 2018 – Rapporteur
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During April 26th to 28th, 2018 Resilient Cities – The Annual Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation – 9th edition, organized by ICLEI, the leading global network of more than 1,500 cities, towns and regions committed to building a sustainable future, took place in Bonn, Germany. As part of the five-people Rapporteuring Team, I covered three days worth of plenary sessions, presentations, roundtables, facilitated discussions and workshops of one of the five streams:
- Resilience, digitization and technology
- Social aspects of resilience and resilient lifestyles
- Governance of resilience
- Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, and Resilience Indicators and Standards
- Economics of resilience (fiscal aspect, insurance, etc.)
Conference Schedule
At the end of each session, draft versions of the protocol were made available to ICLEI’s Global Communications Team to provide them with additional material for the ICLEI CityTalk Blog and quote-worthy statements for the ICLEI Twitter Account, as well as to inform them on newly revealed findings and important news released during the sessions that could be relevant for the daily closing or opening event speeches held by ICLEI or City of Bonn officials.
Final versions of the protocols were handed over to ICLEI during the week following the conference, for them to be used for the congress report including key outcomes of the event. ICLEI will release the report a few months after the event [not available as of 2018-05-10].
Along the way, I had the opportunity to gain lots of new and exciting knowledge on how Nature-based Solutions (NBS) can transform urban spaces and planning processes in the interests of more livable and resilient cities, how to involve Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) as well as the public into urban climate resilience enhancing, bring the insurance industry and cities together, support local and sub-national governments selecting fit-for-purpose resilience assessment frameworks, and how science can provide cities with knowledge that enables them to fulfill their climate change leadership potential in both mitigation and adaptation. Resilient Cities 2018 used the Talanoa Dialogue as framework for knowledge-sharing and joined solution-finding among the participants, acting as an extension of the Regions & Cities Talanoa Dialogue.
For other people to have access to and benefit from the information shared during Resilient Cities 2018, I decided to compose summaries of the conference sessions that I’ve covered and publish them on my blog from late April on throughout May 2018. If you’re interested, have a look at the Resilient Cities 2018 – Blogpost Overview and pick one of the interesting blogposts on urban resilience for you to read!
