City2City learning expert presents at IPCC Cities and Climate Change Science Conference
Image: David Miller, former Mayor of Toronto and North American Director of C40 Cities
Expert in City2City learning, Wolfgang Haupt, is presenting research on the significance of City2City learning in transnational climate networks, at the IPCC Cities and Climate Change Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada.
His poster will be showcased today and tomorrow at the conference, where scientists, policymakers and experts are meeting to discuss the importance of cities when it comes to climate action and climate impacts.
Haupt co-developed the City2City learning concept with BEGIN partners Prof. Chris Zevenbergen and Berry Gersonius of UNESCO-IHE and Dr. Sebastiaan van Herk, of Bax & Company.
BEGIN is conducting City2City learning workshops across 10 cities in the North Sea Region, so they can gain valuable insight and experience from their peers. The process is proving to be very effective in avoiding repeated mistakes, building solid relationships across borders and fundamentally, dealing with urgent common challenges.
“To keep pace and cope with the rapid changes occurring in cities nowadays, requires accelerated learning through peer learning. Cities engaging in City2City learning networks are often looking for practical exchanges on progresses, but also aim to connect with cities that face similar challenges.”
- Haupt on City2City learning
His paper discusses the role of pioneering cities in providing useful solutions for upscaling their best practices, avoiding the consolidation of a global climate stakeholders elite operating outside of democratic control and the challenges of involving the private sector for financing climate actions, where the networks can act as a matchmaker.
The conference, co-sponsored by UN-Habitat, UNEP, Cities Alliance, ICLEI, SDSN and UCLG, aims to inspire the next frontier of research focused on the science of cities and climate change. The primary goal of the conference is to assess the state of academic and practice-based knowledge related to cities and climate change, and to establish a global research agenda based on the joint identification of key gaps by the academic, practitioner and urban policy making communities.
You can view Wolfgang’s poster online here
