The Executive Chief Office has approved today the subscription to a collaboration agreement between UN-Habitat, which is the UN organization for human settlements, and the Govermment of Catalonia through the Departments of Territory and Sustainability and Foreign Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency. According to this agreement, the Catalan Government will contribute with €1.2 millions in four years-time to keep the headquarters of the Global Resilient Cities Programme in Barcelona. UN-Habitat will use Catalonia as a regional approach model of their Resilient Cities Profiling Tool.

The Global Resilient Cities Programme is part of the UN-Habitat 2020-2023 Strategic Plan and it’s goal is to incorporate the urban resiliency in sustainable urban policies through a multi-sectorial approach. This way, the strategy has into account the different threatens that cities suffer, like for example the current climate change, the different actors that can intervene, and like how can the different government typologies be. The Programme is also aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the Paris Agreement against Climate Change and the Urban Agenda, amongst others.

In 2017, The Territory and Sustainability Department already signed an understanding memorandum with UN-Habitat, that has been recently prorogated. The memorandum was based in the idea that cities should be the focus to apply actions to increase resilience to face climate change, risk reduction policies, refurbishing and sustainable development. Cooperation actions related to this memorandum are focused in the areas of responsability of the Territory and Sustainability Department, such as urban policies, sustainable development, land planification, fight against climate change, water and residuus management, and public transport.

That memorandum established the necessary framework to share knowledge, provide mutual support and define cooperation programmes to carry out specific projects, taks that are agreed in a yearly basis. Nowadays, the Catalan Government considers necessary to reinforce the territory resilience capacity to face current challenges and threats, and this is why they have given green light to this new collaboration agreement sign-up.

This way, on one hand, the Government will contribute to keep the Global Resilient Cities Programme headquarters in Barcelona with a total of €1.2 millions in four years-time, that will be equally pay in by the Territory and Sustainability, and Foreign Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency departments.

On the other hand, UN-Habitat would like to give a regional approach to their Resilient Cities Profiling Tool and is committed to use Catalonia as a model for that. The Territory and Sustainability Department will promote the participation of Catalan middle-size cities in the implementation of this tool. They will also provide their knowledge on the application of their Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement against Climate Change and the ellaboration of Catalonia’s Urban Agenda in Catalonia.

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Institutional Relations and Transparency will give support to the actions taken by the Department of Territory and Sustainability. Moreover, in terms of foreign affairs, the agreement with UN-Habitat reflects the interest of the Catalan Government in the attraction and upkeep of global programmes and initiatives linked to the United Nations in Catalonia. In this sense, the Government expects Catalonia to become a referent in the establishment of headquarters and programmes from international bodies and as a place to celebrate global summits. The UN Global Resilient Cities Programme is, therefore, an example that enbodies this goodwill.