A session on ‘One-UN Roundtable’ was organised at the 11th World Urban Forum on June 29. The roundtable was built upon the recent review of the implementation of New Urban Agenda (NUA) and the high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly in April 2022. It aimed to provide an analysis of current efforts to integrate housing and urban development into the common country analysis and the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks. The session presented the joint initiative of United Nations Development Coordination Office (UNDCO) and UN-Habitat to enhance country level programming on urban development to assist member states in the implementation of New Urban Agenda for achieving SDGs.
Chris Williams, Director, New York Liaison Office, UN-Habitat and Adam Abdelmoula, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia acted as the Moderators for the session. H E Collen Vixen Kelapile, President, ECOSOC and Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director, UN-Habitat were the two keynote speakers of the roundtable discussion.
Vixen said that there is a need to create balance between humanitarian needs and development. “I am also a firm believer of the New Urban agenda since the adoption”, he mentioned. He said that studies state that the next generation will be living in a world where 7 out of 10 people reside in urban areas, and added “that means that our efforts to achieve sustainable development will depend on how we manage urbanisation and NUA gives us a roadmap to do
just that.”
Maimunah Mohd Sharif addressed the participants and panelists, and said that there is an urgent need to shift our approach and instead of trying to place urbanisation as an outcome, it’s better to develop joint urban programming to assist the UN country teams to implement the framework. She mentioned how series of different events are calling for sustainable urbanisation, including the yet to be held COP27, Urban 20 and G20.
Adam Abdelmoula then talked about the presence of different programmes and collaborations and partnerships in nations on SDGs and sustainable urbanisation. He said that governments require stimulating, consultative, collaborative and inclusive visioning exercise for a long-term development trajectory grounded in a clearly articulated evidence based and robust theory of change.
Peter Grohmann, Resident Coordinator, Mexico, UNDCO said that there is need to put people in the centre and address urban development in an integral way. Emilia Sáiz, Secretary-General, United Cities and Local Governments stressed on the importance of representation of local governments at the decision-making stage to make sustainable urbanisation a reality. The roundtable session had representatives and heads of several UN agencies and nations.