A global community that cares

🖇️ Breakout rooms for Work Program Synchronizations

The following topics are envisaged: 

- GCoM Session on Collaborating towards the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience 🖼️ Link to Zoom (same session as previous plenary)

The Race to Zero and Race to Resilience have been launched by the UNFCCC Climate Champions as the platforms to capture ambition and action of the non-party stakeholder community towards COP 26. GCoM is therefore working with our alliance of partners in the coming months to confirm an appropriate approach for engagement and outreach to cities, recognizing that there are many existing campaign and programs already focused on these areas. As such, close collaboration with UCLG sections around the world will be crucial. The objective of these campaigns are to build momentum around the shift to a resilient and decarbonized economy ahead of COP26 and send a resounding signal to governments who are expected to strengthen their contributions to the Paris Agreement. This session will focus on providing information on GCoM’s role and discussion on how UCLG sections might best engage on these two key campaigns, including how this can be most impactful and beneficial for cities including an example from one of the sections.

- Culture & Nature 🖼️ Link to Zoom

Our values are the basis of our actions, the glasses we use to see the world, the frames we accept to transform it. The way we understand culture and nature is based on those frames. If holistic and ambitious, a Pact for the Future will need to make more explicit the interconnections and the interdependency of frames, as dimensions of development.

UCLG is a global champion of the advocacy of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability and promoted several standard-setting documents that place heritage, creativity and diversity at the centre of local development, such as Culture 21 Actions. UCLG has also supported and promoted the Universal Declaration of Humankind Rights as a fundamental document relating the right of humanity and of all living species to exist.

Can we explore further the relation among Planet, Nature and Culture? If you also have this question, join this session.

📑 Culture, Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Briefing

📑 CULTURE 21: “ACTIONS”

- Stepping up the UCLG-FMDV Strategy on Localizing Financing for Sustainable Urbanization and Territorial Development 🖼️ Link to Zoom

Building on the progress and challenges of the implementation of the ‘Strategy on Localising Financing for Sustainable Urbanisation’, three years after its adoption by the Executive Bureau in 2018, we think it is key to give it a new impetus. 

Two challenges are ahead of us. Firstly, we need to clearly identify a set of policy modalities, tools and instruments that we need to better and more effectively promote in order to move our agenda forward. What does recent experience tell us about the levers of action that should be prioritised to increase local and regional governments' access to finance: a reinforced involvement of national governments on financing urban and territorial development, strengthening financial intermediation at national level, technical assistance to support the structuring of pipelines of local projects, rebuilding the local fiscal space, developing guarantee and credit enhancement mechanisms for access to external financing and blended finance etc.? 

A second challenge is to raise the profile of these solutions in the international debate. We certainly need to continue our advocacy work, particularly within the United Nations system. But we must also flesh out this advocacy by putting forward actionable proposals based on the experience of our constituency. And also focus on some specific global agenda monitoring spaces where these messages can be conveyed in a more forceful and compelling way – such as the ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Sustainable Development and the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

📄 Background Document

- Food Security 🖼️ Link to Zoom

Food systems provide a concrete example of the importance of considering and addressing urban-rural linkages for a planet- and people-safe ecological transition, because they ensure increased resilience, strengthened economies and the engagement of local communities.

Food production and consumption have direct and indirect impacts on GHG emissions, species conservation, and people's relationship with their surroundings and the environment. Food systems are therefore central to the climate change and biodiversity agendas, and consequently to the ecological transformation of the territory.

They are also a key element in the development of the 2030 and Urban Agendas, which require a territorial vision in this area, as local and regional governments play a fundamental role in the planning and management of food systems.

The United Nations Summit on Food Systems is scheduled for next autumn and UCLG wants to arrive there with a position on the essential role that local and regional governments, together with producers, are playing in guaranteeing food for citizens and defending the environment.

UCLG TV 📺

Our UCLG TV will broadcast on demand with original and innovative material related to the topic of the day. Stay tuned to see your work and our work through this new connection window!

🎥 [UCLG IN ACTION Channel] with latest news, conferences, campaigns and more.

🎬 [OUR VOICES Channel] with key interviews, talks, keynotes.

📽️ [LRG CARTOON NETWORK] with animated and fun material.

UCLG HELP DESK 🎧 (haga click para entrar)

Our Sherpas answer your questions live, create meetings, and connect you with fellow participants.

Networking HUB 💡 An interactive space via Wonder

An interactive space to “see” each other in real time, to sit down and enjoy a coffee alone, with a colleague or a dear friend you haven´t seen in a while. This new tool seeks to maintain the spirit, and informality of interactions typically taking place in the UCLG Networking HUB. Link to be shared when the Retreat begins.