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Future Earth at Innovate4Cities 2021

Innovate4Cities 2021 was a virtual global and regional event that brought together science and innovation, policy and practice united by a common objective: enabling cities to take accelerated and more ambitious climate action.

The Future Earth community helped shape the Innovate4Cities conference that took place on Oct. 11–15, 2021. Convened by UN-Habitat, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, and co-hosted by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change alongside a wider partners network was the biggest urban focused conference of the year (7000 participants). 

The I4C conference’s key theme was on the Global Research and Action Agenda, which was the primary outcome of the Cities and Climate Science Conference that was held in March 2018 in Edmonton, Canada, and at the time was co-developed with the Urban Knowledge-Action Network. Discussions stemming from this broader theme addressed more specific topics such as post-pandemic green recovery, climate justice, and building back better. Across the globe, as societies tackle COVID-19 recovery in earnest, there was a real need to discuss how to build back better; to build cleaner, more resilient, sustainable societies and a fairer world.

Updated framework from the Cities and Climate Science Conference that was held in March 2018 in Edmonton, Canada.

Members from the Urban Knowledge-Action Network held key positions in the Science and Innovation Steering Committee (Steering Committee co-chair Dr. Xuemei Bai, Dr. Seth Schultz and former Steering Committee member Dr. Debra Roberts, alongside Mr. Bernhard Barth and Dr. Cathy Oke from the Advisory Group), which coordinated the substantive conference programme inputs and oversaw the conference’s objectives. The group also ensures the proceedings of the conference are of substantial quality and feeds into major Science-Policy discussions – with the first one being for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Graphic Visual of the Opening Plenary on Cities and Climate Change Science and Innovation.

Some sessions where the Future Earth community were part of include the Opening Plenary on Cities and Climate Change Science and Innovation, and the Plenary on Adaptation and resilience as integrated approaches to tackling climate change. Further, the working group on sustainable finance of the Future Earths Knowledge-Action Network Finance & Economics, which includes Dr. Jurgen van der Heijden, together with Dr. Kristy Faccer, and Dr. Masachika Suzuki, organised the session called “Financing Climate Adaptation and Mitigation: Interdependency as a Rule: the Case of the Energy Transition” in which they showcased urban practices from around the world. The session was concluded by the concern that finance of climate change adaptation at present misses the quintessence of adaptation i.e., the fact that it is unthinkable without co-benefits. Further, Dr Kathryn Bowen from the Health Knowledge-Action Network spoke about health at the Mayoral Opening event for Oceania.

The Future Earth secretariat also played a role in the Partners’ Network Organizing Committee. In this committee, we co-developed the conference programme to ensure our Global Research Projects and Knowledge-Action Networks had relevant session themes to contribute to and points of entry. We further helped shape the direction of content development and linked relevant programs and initiatives and ensured a broad support from a communications standpoint. The conference is planned to be held every two years, and we will continue to support the community to feed into this unique conference bridging research and practice.

All sessions are freely available to watch at https://i4c.conference.evey.live/conferences/innovate-4-cities/pages/i4c-home

Future Earth contact for the Innovate4Cities conference: Dr. Giles B. Sioen, Co-lead for Research and Innovation and liaison to the Urban Knowledge-Action Network.