Dealing with the climate emergency in times of Covid-19? Mission possible with Daring Cities

The world’s largest online gathering on climate change for urban leaders starts tomorrow

While the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting humanity, the climate emergency around the globe continues to grow rapidly. The crisis impacts our cities, towns and regions, and science has clearly shown that we only have until 2030 to prevent a climate change catastrophe. Recently faced with the COVID-19 crisis, national and international leaders are now struggling to tackle climate and biodiversity emergencies, yet local leaders are mobilizing to address this urgency.

To help accelerate and scale up environmental action, ICLEI is organizing Daring Cities 2020 – the world’s first and largest digital gathering on climate change for urban leaders. This virtual, action-oriented forum is co-designed by ICLEI and the City of Bonn and will take place 7-28 October 2020.

Learning together how to respond to the climate emergency in the context of the coronavirus pandemic

Thousands of urban thought-leaders and changemakers will gather for three weeks – virtually – to strategize, learn and commit together to respond to the climate emergency in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"As Mayors, we witness the impacts of climate change in our own cities. We local governments are determined to answer the call of emergency, to be the ones daring to take the lead on climate action," said Ashok Sridharan, Mayor of Bonn and ICLEI President, on the occasion.

During Daring Cities 2020 mayors and leaders from local governments around the world will be weighing in on issues such as resilience, mitigation and climate action to provide a cohesive, integrated response to the current climate crisis, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of the speakers announced so far include:

• António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations;
• Alok Sharma, COP26 President for the United Kingdom;
• Ashok Sridharan, Mayor of Bonn and President of ICLEI;
• Gino Van Begin, Secretary-General of ICLEI- Local Governments for Sustainability;
• Shinjirō Koizumi, Minister of Environment, Japan;
• Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat;
• Dozens of Mayors and leaders from local governments around the world.

The virtual event will also connect and recognize Daring Cities, that is cities or regions that have made and implemented bold commitments to climate action or have embedded climate action into the heart of their COVID-19 recovery plan and efforts.

"While national and global leaders are struggling to address this urgent crisis, the daring actions of local leaders are spreading around the world. Daring Cities will recognize and empower these courageous leaders,” commented Gino Van Begin, Secretary-General of ICLEI.

Free and open to the public, the virtual forum is supported by major contributions from the Federal City of Bonn, the German Federal Ministries for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), and the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Savings Bank in Bonn.

Find out more information about Daring Cities 2020, program and registration on https://daringcities.org/