Hendricks receives expert report on urbanisation’s impacts on climate targets from the German Advisory Council on Global Change
The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) presented a new expert report "Humanity on the move: unlocking the transformative power of cities" to Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks and representatives of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The report was submitted in time ahead of the UN Habitat III conference, scheduled for October 2016 in Quito, Ecuador. The study focuses on the impacts urbanisation has on sustainable urban development and the achievement of climate targets. The independent, interdisciplinary council has advised the German government on urgent issues of global change since 1992.
According to the experts, the urbanisation surge is primarily taking place in Asia and Africa and will be a key driver of global change in the 21st century. Against this background, the report makes core recommendations for sustainable and integrated urban development policy and for strengthening cities as political players. In this context, the report focuses on people’s needs and the contributions that cities and regions can and must make to living within the planet’s limits and to sustainable transformation. The WBGU is also developing universal minimum standards and norms for the social, political and economic inclusion of citizens in urban development processes. Finally, the council also underlines the fact that each city is unique and that tailored strategies for urban development policy are required at local level.
An additional key recommendation is the adoption of social contracts for the urban transformation towards sustainability worldwide and at various levels of governance (international, national, regional, municipal) in the form of fully formulated charters. Furthermore, the WBGU calls on the German government to promote land use planning and sustainable urban development in all cities, to work for reform, to reinforce UN institutions in this area and to place this issue on the agenda during the government’s G20 presidency in 2017. The action recommendations reaffirm the core proposals made by the Federal Environment Ministry (BMUB) in the first draft of the New Urban Agenda ahead of the Habitat III conference: (1) recognising cities as development actors and enabling them to create decent urban environments for people to live in; (2) realising sustainable and integrated urban development around the world.
The WBGU report lends momentum to the BMUB’s urban development policies, which promote sustainable and integrated urban development in Germany in the context of national urban development policy and internationally through urbanisation partnerships and the International Climate Initiative (IKI).
The BMUB is now reviewing which recommendations can be implemented and how best to do so. The National Urban Development Policy Board (Kuratorium der Nationalen Stadtentwicklungspolitik) and the interministerial working group on sustainable urban development (IMA Stadt), among others, are charged with this work.