Conference Agenda

The world’s population passed 8 billion in late 2022 with much of the increase concentrated in ever-expanding urban areas where more than 80 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is generated. By 2030, 60 percent of people will live in urban areas. These cities, towns, and settlements are already home to many of the world’s development challenges – as well as many of its opportunities.

A series of compounding challenges – economic, social, and environmental – has meant an unprecedented period of uncertainty for many urban areas. Climate-fueled disasters are becoming more frequent, intense, and unpredictable for urban communities. At the same time, local authorities are striving to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and other systems-wide crises, such as water, food, and energy.

In the face of such a challenging context, there is the opportunity for national and local governments to scale up their disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation actions to protect citizens and local infrastructure assets and systems. To make this happen these governments and other stakeholders (students, youth, communities, private sector) need support through education and training, bringing to them best practices and practical solutions, which education and training institutes can provide.

Objectives:

This panel will address the following questions:

-       What are the examples of education and training supporting governments and other stakeholders embed risk reduction at the core of integrated local development planning?

-       What critical factors can help to create partnerships between urban governments and academic institutions to improve risk informed decisions?

-       How can training and education facilitate greater local government-private sector partnership through networks and platforms, to increase municipality access to wider technical skills and solutions?