Strasbourg
France

Congress of Local and Regional Authorities - debate on making cities resilient resolution 339 (2012)

Organizer(s) Council of Europe
Date
-

Background

The Current Affairs Committee of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (a body within the Council of Europe) called for a debate on making cities resilient, at which its members tabled a resolution calling for the Congress to support UNISDR's Making Cities Resilient campaign. The debate took place at the 22nd Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.

Resolution topics

• Urban areas and cities face climate threats such as rising temperatures, rising sea levels, heavy or declining precipitation, drought and also storms, which sometimes take on the proportions of disasters and have become more frequent in recent decades.

• The high concentration of people in cities and the complexity of the systems which interact and provide goods and services further increase the potential damage to human beings and local economies.

• Cities are therefore particularly vulnerable to these trends and must take up the challenge of reducing disaster risks and enhancing their resilience to climate change and disasters through mitigation and adaptation measures.

• The Congress has long shown its concern about climate change and its impact on cities, in particular by proposing “40 measures in dealing with natural hazards” (2005) and adopting Resolution 248 (2008) on “Climate change: building adaptive capacity of local and regional authorities” and more recently Resolution 317 (2010) on “Coastal towns and cities tackling threats from the sea”.

• In the Slavutych Appeal launched in 2006, 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster, the Congress set out principles to guide public authorities in the various areas of nuclear safety (such as the involvement of local and regional authorities, neighbourhood solidarity, transparency and consultation of citizens).

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