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Add to Preferred SourcesThe IPCC Cities and Climate Change Science Conference, hosted by the City of Edmonton, culminated yesterday with the establishment of a global blueprint to better understand climate change, its impacts on cities, and the critical role localities play in solving this challenge.
Over the course of three days, scientists, policymakers, researchers and development experts worked to assess the current state of academic and practice-based knowledge related to cities and climate change, identify key knowledge priorities, and chart a course forward for academic, practitioner and urban policy-making communities. The conference agreed that transformation needs to happen now. Specifically, conference participants coalesced around the need for inclusion and social transformation, improving evidence-based information, and funding & finance.
“The impacts of climate change are already being felt in our urban areas, and the next few years are critical for determining how effectively we will rise to the challenge of protecting our cities. However, we can’t undertake this work blindly. At this conference, we have been able to coalesce around the most important areas of inquiry so we can use precious time and resources in the most efficient and targeted way possible. And this research won’t just help save our cities – it will also improve them for generations to come,” said Seth Schultz, Director of Science and Innovation, C40 Climate Leadership Group, and one of the co-chairs of the conference’s Scientific Steering Committee.
The conference, the first of its kind, was co-sponsored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with nine partners – C40 Cities, Cities Alliance, Future Earth, ICLEI, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment), UN-Habitat, and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) .
“Years from now we will look back at this conference time in Edmonton and celebrate how the collaboration between the scientific community, policymakers, and practitioners helped initiate positive change at the local level. I’m so proud that Edmonton was able to play host to some of the brightest minds on our globe and I’m committed to furthering the efforts that came out of this conference,” said Don Iveson, Mayor of Edmonton.
The Cities IPCC conference helped forge stronger partnerships among the 750 leaders, innovators, and influencers who registered and cultivated a collaborative environment among academics, policymakers, and practitioners to share new findings, initiatives, and programs. Over 6,000 others from more than 30 countries followed the conference online.
“Business-as-usual will not save the world. This conference disrupted the traditional story of the world’s cities to show how science can partner with policy and practice to transform the world’s cities into climate-smart, equitable and sustainable homes for all,” said Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group II, and a member of the conference’s Scientific Steering Committee.
“With the contributions of cities and the risks to cities in the context of climate change loud and clear, solution-oriented knowledge is a must. This conference was a milestone on the way to a collective effort by the science, policy and practice communities to co-create and co-design a global research agenda for the future and for forging partnerships among them,” said Shobhakar Dhakal of the Asian Institute of Technology and one of the co-chairs of the conference’s Scientific Steering Committee.
“This conference is not just a milestone for how the research community thinks about co-designing its priorities with diverse voices from across society. It has also issued a call to strengthen the social sciences so that we can better understand complex questions like the role of informal settlements in addressing climate change. We can only create real transformative changes in cities through research focusing on issues of equity, power distribution, integration of values, and human behaviour,” said Anne-Hélène Prieur-Richard, Global Hub Director, Montreal, of Future Earth and one of the members of the conference’s Organizing Committee.
The three-day conference, organized by a Scientific Steering Committee made up of engineering, natural and social sciences, humanities, and urban development experts, focused on four major themes: cities and climate change; urban emissions, impacts, and vulnerabilities; solutions for the transition to low carbon and climate resilient cities; and enabling transformative climate action in cities.
The findings from these sessions on recent advances in knowledge will stimulate timely publications to be assessed in the IPCC’s ongoing Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), scheduled to be completed in 2022. The menu of global and regional research inspired by the conference will also help inform a special IPCC report on cities, as well as support the implementation of the Paris Agreement, the New Urban Agenda, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the local level.
Original source: UNEP
Published on 8 March 2018