7th Steering Committee Meeting Making Cities Resilient Campaign
Background:
Launched in May 2010, the Making Cities Resilient: 'My City is getting ready!' Campaign1, has been successful in raising awareness and political profile for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience among cities. Upon the recommendation of partners and cities at the High-Level Forum on Implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in Florence, Italy2, the Campaign was extended beyond 2015 to 2020, not only to continue DRR advocacy but also to provide support to cities and local governments in the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. A variety of tools are available to guide capacity development towards building resilience in cities. As of April 2019, more than 4,250 cities have signed up to the Campaign.
The Campaign was guided by an ‘Advisory Panel’ in the early stage and from 2014 replaced by the ‘Steering Committee’, an informal group to provide guidance on raising the profile of the subject, engaging cities and partners to the Campaign, and on providing technical advice. Currently, UN-HABITAT serves as a Chair of the Campaign’s Steering Committee while UNISDR serves as the Secretariat.
The Steering Committee meets in person once or twice annually but retains more frequent communication virtually. The last meeting of the committee was held on 11 November 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, to discuss the way forward of the Campaign as it is due to end in 2020. The meeting concluded with a consensus that the work on urban risk reduction should continue but requires further consultation on its name, the area of support, potential partners and the mechanism to operate the successor of the Campaign and extend support to cities for the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 at the local level.
Objectives:
- Present the findings from the review of the MCR Campaign
- Brainstorm on ideas and details of the MCR Campaign successor
- Design the thematic areas and operational mechanism of the Campaign successor