The ICLEI World Congress 2021 - 2022, hosted by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, and the City of Malmö, Sweden, will hold a hybrid summit on 11-13 May.

The event, called Malmö Summit, will be an international three-day congress with the participation of local and regional governments, urban practitioners, researchers and stakeholders to exchange with and inspire one another on the best practices in local sustainable development, and learn firsthand from the City of Malmö’s wealth of sustainability initiatives.

Themed as Sustainability. Together, the Malmö Summit will explore and highlight critical topics in sustainable urban development and reflect on the outcomes of the COP26 Conference, and set new goals for cities, towns and regions in response to the climate emergency.

The Summit will focus on a core programming for participants, which will be complemented with strategic high-level dialogues based on themes explored in 2021, as well as exciting technical visits, in-depth workshops and multiple networking opportunities.

Registration is open and can be made to the Summit from here.

World Architecture Community is official media partner of the ICLEI World Congress 2021 - 2022 and will be bringing you the latest news from the Summit.

Image courtesy of ICLEI World Congress

"Malmö Summit will bring to life the motto of Sustainability. Together"

"The Malmö Summit will bring to life the motto of Sustainability. Together,” said Frank Cownie Mayor, City of Des Moines, US, President of ICLEI’s Global Executive Committee. 

"We’re pleased to partner with the City of Malmö, Sweden for this World Congress because Malmö is a leading example of what cities are doing right now to co-create innovative sustainable development with equity at the forefront."

"The City of Malmö, a once successful industrial city that fell on hard times has since reinvented itself as a dynamic knowledge centre built on cultural diversity, youth and sustainable development," said a press statement.

"The City of Malmö is honored to host the ICLEI World Congress 2021-2022," said Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, Mayor, City of Malmö. 

"This is an opportunity for us to showcase our environmental and socially integrated approach to sustainability and to highlight real-world examples locally, in order to provide other cities with actionable information." 

"At the Malmö Summit we look forward to also learning from other cities and regions through the sharing of best-practices." 

"Building on this, the Malmö Commitment will be introduced at the Congress, firmly placing local and regional governments at the forefront of the global response to today’s challenges," Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh added.

Image © Pontus Olsson

"An action-oriented event"

The Malmö Summit is described as "an action-oriented event" with a pre-event researchers’ symposium, high-level plenaries, interactive mobile workshops, virtual sessions, and networking opportunities.

The event will ensure a space for cities, towns and regions to experience the power of working together toward their sustainability goals.

The organizers highlighted that "Local and regional governments and their partners from around the world are invited to join the Malmö Summit in showcasing, celebrating and exchanging on the vision of a sustainable urban future."

Image © Karl Hörnfeldt

Program overview

At the Summit, the rich and engaging in-person and online sessions will be divided into three overarching categories:

• Strategies towards a climate neutral future: These sessions will explore the efforts needed in our cities, towns and regions in order to move towards a climate-neutral future, specifically looking at technological approaches and fostering behavior change within the community.
• Strategies towards resilient and healthy communities in harmony with nature: These sessions will investigate cutting-edge discussions in building resilience capacity in our cities, towns, regions and communities, making them healthy homes both for people as well as for nature.
• Strategies towards equitable and inclusive communities: These sessions will look at equitable, inclusive and whole-of-society approaches to local sustainable development, participatory approaches and stakeholder engagement, and prioritizing the interlink between human health and sustainable local development.

Sustainable finance and Innovation will be at the heart of the Summit

The Summit will focus on two important enablers that will be leveraged during the summit to achieve sustainable goals to turn into action: these are Sustainable finance and Innovation.

Sustainable Finance: These sessions will focus on bringing all actors along the investment chain behind the SDGs to respond to the crisis in the short-term and rebuild over the long-term for a more resilient and sustainable future.

Innovation: These sessions will share new approaches for addressing urban sustainability; including highlighting areas the ICLEI Network are already applying. The sessions under this area will show that innovation is a process of trial, failure and success, looking at innovation through two lenses; innovation in sectors and Innovation in policy and governance approaches.

Image © Susan Q. Yin

Research Symposium

The Research Symposium, the 6th in ICLEI’s 32-year history will deepen the dialogue among leading urban sustainability researchers, innovators, local and regional practitioners, political leaders, and scientists, at the interface of research-policy-practice to co-create actionable knowledge for science-informed decision making to support subnational governments in their transition toward further sustainability.

Research Symposium will discuss two important reports and key outcomes

During the Research Symposium, as the highlighted Research & Innovation component of the ICLEI World Congress 2021-2022, two important reports and key outcomes from the Innovate4Cities 2021 Conference, will be launched and discussed, as new agendas for cities and climate change science.

First, an update to the Global Research Action Agenda on Cities and Climate Change Science will be released as Findings from Innovate4Cities 2021 and Update to the Global Research and Action Agenda.

Second, an updated City Research and Innovation Agenda (Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, GCoM), a response for city practice and city leadership to the updated GRAA agenda, will also be launched.

The Research Symposium will also include: The Knowledge Hall, a space for local governments and researchers to showcase their projects, and Research Market Place, a space to pitch researchers’ project ideas, as well as explore partnerships and coalitions for future research and innovation collaboration.

The Symposium is designed and delivered under ICLEI’s Global Research Strategy is co-organized by the City of Malmö, the World Maritime University (WMU) - Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute (GOI) and ICLEI.

The Research Symposium will take place on 10 May at the World Maritime University (WMU). More information can be found on this link. 

Mobile Workshops

To give the participants a unique opportunity to learn first-hand from the City of Malmö’s wealth of sustainability initiatives, the Summit will hold 13 Mobile Workshops, organized by the City of Malmö especially for the ICLEI World Congress 2021-2022: Malmö Summit.

Participants will explore the innovative solutions and approaches that the City of Malmö has implemented to advance its own sustainable development.

To learn more about each Mobile Workshop, please visit the website.

The Malmö Commitment 

The Malmö Commitment positions local and regional governments at the centre of the global response to today’s challenges, by encouraging sustainable approaches, innovation, adaptability, participation, and inclusiveness in policy-making to tackle the current climate emergency and by embedding social equity at the core of their local sustainable development. It gathers local and regional governments that commit to this urban transformation following a four-step process: identify the challenges; monitor social equity indicators; report the progress and enhance the effort taken through neighbouring communities.

During day two of the Malmö Summit, initial signees will be announced and other cities or regions will be invited to join the commitment.

An ICLEI Member since 1996, the City of Malmö is a climate-smart knowledge city, listed as the fourth most innovative in the world by OECD.

Top image © Pontus Olsson

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