WUF9: Call to join Resilient Cities Campaign_National emergency broadcasting network

UNISDR head Robert Glasser speaking at the World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

By Denis McClean

KUALA LUMPUR, 11 February, 2018 - Cities and towns attending the World Urban Forum were urged at the weekend to join UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign which now has over 3,800 adherents representing almost one billion people in urban centres around the world.

Separately, the Campaign Steering Committee met Sunday in Kuala Lumpur to discuss strategy and agreed to reconvene later this year to consider how to manage the Campaign beyond 2020 when it is expected to have reached at least 5,000 members.

“The Making Cities Resilient Campaign is very much about giving people hope of a better future in an urban environment which is inclusive and sustainable,” said the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser in a high-level session on urban resilience where he called for more cities to join up.

Linking the Campaign with the overall 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Mr. Glasser said: “The road to achieving the SDGs runs through our towns and cities and millions travel on it every day in the hope that it will lead to a better, safer future for them and their children.

“The Making Cities Resilient Campaign is very much about giving people hope of a better future in an urban environment which is inclusive and sustainable. It is also about developing a greater understanding of the role that cities can play in eradicating poverty by avoiding the creation of informal settlements in disaster prone locations, and by providing basic services and infrastructure to people who live in vulnerable circumstances.”

Mr. Glasser drew attention to the fact that poverty and exposure are decisive elements in disaster mortality, injury and sickness, especially so in cities and towns where land use regulations and building codes are not respected. He recalled that the Campaign was launched in 2010 at a moment in history when, for the first time, more people were living in urban centres than in the countryside.

The Campaign’s Ten Essentials or actions for resilience map directly against the global plan for reducing disaster losses, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and its targets and indicators for measuring reductions in disaster losses.