(from left) Mami Mizutori, UNDRR, Sameh Wahba, World Bank Cities, Mohamed Boussraoui, UCLG, Gino Van Begin, ICLEI, Lauren Sorkin, Globall Resilient Cities Network, and Esteban Leon, UN-Habitat

By Denis McClean

ABU DHABI, 9 February, 2019 - "Think big, think bold. The opportunity is there. If you want it to shrink it will shrink. If you want it to be bigger it will be bigger… Let us build this campaign to have a lasting impact globally."

With those rousing words, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat, Maimunah Mohd Sharif urged partners in the ten-year old Making Cities Resilient (MCR) Campaign, meeting on Saturday at the World Urban Forum, to take MCR to another level during the Decade for Action called for by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

Ms.Sharif, a former mayor of Penang Island, Malaysia, and deeply familiar with urban risk including floods and tsunamis, gave the opening address on Saturday at a meeting of partners considering the shape of a successor initiative to the Campaign with the working title MCR2030.

She said that UN-Habitat was proud to have played a central role in the MCR Campaign since it got underway ten years ago and help it to grow to over 4,300 cities and towns.

Ms. Sharif said that local governments alone cannot tackle the problem of disaster risk but are part of an eco-system which includes national, regional and international actors. Success in building urban resilience required both vertical integration from national to local government level and horizontal integration with local partners.

MCR had helped to deliver strong policies at the local level and Ms. Sharif looked forward to an action-oriented agenda over the next ten years.

UNDRR chief Mami Mizutori had convened representatives from UN-Habitat, C40, ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, UCLG - United Cities and Local Governments, the World Council on City Data, the World Bank Group and IFRC, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on Saturday to discuss a draft proposal for MCR2030.

Ms. Mizutori said: "the next phase should be about moving from advocacy to a greater focus on implementation, so that cities tangibly and measurably improve their resilience to risk."