Malmö named as a Resilience Hub by United Nations
The Swedish city has been recognised for its proactive efforts to prepare for and mitigate climate-related hazards and joins the other hubs of Barcelona, Helsingborg, Manchester and Milan.
Malmö is the latest European city to be named as a Resilience Hub by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and its partners for its proactive efforts to prepare for and mitigate climate-related hazards.
The coastal city joins the fellow Swedish city of Helsingborg along with Barcelona, Manchester and Milan as the first European Resilience Hubs named by Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030), an initiative coordinated by 11 core partners.
Building resilience
UNDRR sits at the centre of the UN system for reducing risk, coordinating risk reduction activities towards a more resilient future, and protecting gains made towards the Sustainable Development Goals. It hosts the Secretariat of MCR2030 which has 11 core partners.
Malmö, which was severely flooded after a cloudburst event in 2014, recently completed a special coastal protection analysis, and a coastal protection strategy is expected to be finalised next year. The city has also taken steps to cut its energy use in city-owned buildings by 30 per cent and was named the most environmentally friendly municipality in the country last year.
“As a coastal city, Malmö is facing challenges from sea-level rise, storms, cloudbursts, and heatwaves today and even more in the future,” said Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, mayor of the City of Malmö.
“Malmö has not only recognised the challenges but also embraced the opportunities to develop solutions with co-benefits. Malmö is glad to be a part of MCR2030 and looks forward to establishing itself as a Resilience Hub, which will provide a unifying role for resilience action in the region.”
Malmö announced the honour while hosting the ICLEI World Congress 2021-22: The Malmö Summit, which includes the theme, “Strategies towards resilient and healthy cities”. A key feature of Resilience Hubs is the potential for collaboration with other cities around the world.
“As a coastal city, Malmö is facing challenges from sea-level rise, storms, cloudbursts, and heatwaves today and even more in the future”
“Cities and urban areas around the world are facing a rising tide of disasters, as revealed by the recent Global Assessment Report on disaster risk,” said Mami Mizutori, special representative of the UN secretary general for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of UNDRR.
“Malmö, the first municipality in Sweden to sign the UN’s Agenda 2030, serves as an example of how proactive leadership and disaster risk reduction strategies can help to end the spiral of destruction created when we underestimate disaster risk.”
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