India News | Urban Development: Accelerating Climate Finance, Ensuring Water Security Among U20 Recommendations to G20
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. City leaders and mayors from G20 nations on Saturday urged the grouping to help them develop inclusive and sustainable cities with emphasis on accelerating climate finance, ensuring water security and promoting local culture and economy.
Ahmedabad, Jul 8 (PTI) City leaders and mayors from G20 nations on Saturday urged the grouping to help them develop inclusive and sustainable cities with emphasis on accelerating climate finance, ensuring water security and promoting local culture and economy.
The Urban20, a city diplomacy initiative under India's G20 presidency, has made six recommendations and these will be taken into consideration during the G20 Summit, scheduled to be held in Delhi in September, according to G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant.
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If the world has to accelerate the pace of growth, cities then have to be in the forefront, he told a press conference on the last day of the two-day Urban20 (U20) Mayoral Summit here.
The G20 comprises China, France, Germany, India, the UK, the US, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkiye, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and the European Union.
Following the U20 summit's conclusion, a communique was also handed over to Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Kant.
The communique emphasised the strategic importance of city administrations in confronting the global climate crisis and accelerating sustainable development for four billion urban residents, calling mayors and city leaders a "crucial constituency" in today's world.
The six recommendations by U20 leaders include encouraging environmentally responsible behaviours, accelerating climate finance, ensuring water security, promoting local culture and economy, reinventing frameworks for urban governance and planning, and catalysing digital urban futures.
A new U20 climate finance working group will also explore multilateral development bank (MDB) reforms that could help to accelerate investment in urban climate finance, and deepen collaboration between cities and the G20 Expert Group on Strengthening Multilateral Development Banks (SMDB).
The summit saw the participation of 650 delegates from 90 cities. The event was attended by around 80 mayors, including 45 from foreign nations, and deputy mayors.
Kant said that there must be good urban governance and planning, and without good governance, cities can not be the drivers of growth.
"We have received a very good communique from the Urban20. We will take this forward and implement it. The communique is just the beginning. The important thing is to get it implemented. On behalf of the G20, we will take it forward and get it implemented," he said.
In the communique, leaders of the U20 said it is evident that cities are the principal agents for addressing global developmental agendas and shaping a better future.
"We therefore ask G20 national governments to support our leadership and collaborate with us to achieve safe, resilient, just urban societies, and equitable, affordable, inclusive transitions and deliver on the commitment of halving global emissions by 2030 and keeping global temperatures from rising above 1.5°C," they said in the communique.
"We can deliver on social justice, inclusion, climate action, resilience towards disasters and a good quality of life for all citizens, only if cities and national governments work together as valuable and equal partners," it read.
Minister Puri said that around 65 per cent of the world's population lives in urban areas and contributes to over 75 per cent GDP, adding that "urbanisation is, perhaps, the most salient global trend of the 21st century alongside digitisation".
"If, as a global community, we need to 'get Global Development right', it is imperative that we get urban development right," he said.
The U20 is a city diplomacy initiative, comprising cities from G20 countries, emphasising the role of cities in taking forward the global agenda for sustainable development through collaboration among cities.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)