WSIS TalkX: World Cities Day: Building Climate Resilient Cities with Digital Transformation

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Good day ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to welcome you to our WSIS Forum webinar on “Building Climate Resilient Cities with Digital Transformation”. 

Many thanks to the Geneva Cities Hub and Digital Dubai for partnering with ITU to organize today’s webinar. Also, a big thank you to our speakers and all of you for joining us here today. 

According to the latest report​ released by the IPCC Working Group 1 earlier this year, human influence has unequivocally contributed to changes to our climate system and that these are on a scale that is unprecedented.

Cities are where most human activities are concentrated and this makes cities particularly important in our efforts to reduce emissions, as well as being the especially vulnerable to the growing risks of climate change. 

Cities must therefore become leaders toward a net zero future and in building climate resilience and formulating meaningful adaptation strategies to minimize the risks. 

The question remains is the ‘how to’. 

As the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies and digital technologies, ITU believes that technologies are the answer. 

Take for example digital twins, enabling cities to enhance urban planning by developing responses to various climate situations before they happen improving resiliency and sustainability.

International standards are important to the adoption of such new technologies and scaling up different innovative solutions by ensuring interoperability and reducing costs through economies of scale. That is why I am very pleased that ITU’s standardization sector has already taken the initiative to study the standardization requirements for a successful digital transformation in cities, particularly under the framework of ITU-T Study Group 20.

ITU standards are already helping cities to reconfigure their digital strategies, ensure the technical and performance expectations of digital transformation are met.

Of course, we cannot do this alone. 

Meaningful partnership and collaboration are the foundation for tackling global challenges such as climate change, and in ITU we are fortunate to have a diverse membership of 193 Member States and over 900 private sector companies, universities, and international and regional organizations. 

Beyond our membership, ITU is also collaborating with city stakeholders under global platforms, such as the United for Smart Sustainable Cities initiative, the WSIS Forum and even the WSIS Talk we are having today, to help the efforts to achieve the important climate targets.

At this year’s WSIS Forum we organised an event where Mayors from cities around the world shared their insights on the opportunities and challenges that digitalization has brought to their cities. This initiative will be further strengthened next year’s WSIS Forum with the support of our partner Geneva Cities Hub by increasing our engagement with Mayors in the context of Smart Cities. I would like to invite you to take part in and actively contribute to the Forum starting on 15 March 2022, with the final week being held from 30 May – 3 June 2022. 

ITU has been happy to partner with other UN agencies, organizations, and entities to celebrate the World Cities Day since its inception in 2014 and this year is no different. The theme of this year’s World Cities Day is most appropriately Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience.

As urbanization is expected to continue to be a major trend in development, cities need to take decisive actions to pull together the willingness, resources and tools needed to adapt to the current climate crisis. 

As the UN Secretary-General stated recently “The spectre of climate change has become a deadly reality for developing and developed countries alike. Our goal of 1.5°C – and the future of humanity as we know it – are becoming even more elusive”.

I invite all of you to contribute towards the relevant WSIS Action Lines and join us in our journey to support cities to become more sustainable using digital technologies. 

This webinar will provide the latest insights on the opportunities and challenges to do so. 

I wish you a very fruitful exchange and a very happy World Cities Day on Sunday!

Thank you. ​