UN-Habitat Arena - Nature-Based Solutions for Resilient Arab Cities: From Local Action to Urban Transformation (WUF13)

Okay.
Okay.
Thank you so much, everyone again for joining the session.
This is the first session of the arena, we're very happy to have you all with us.
Today's discussion, we will be officially launching the publication that is jointly produced by your inhabitat and Islamic Development Bank.
You will find copies in the three tables, as you can see, you'll also find some publications on the relevant work of your inhabitat that free to grab a copy from the publications.
My name is Jasmin Mustafa.
I'm a program officer at Unhabitat Regional Office for Arab States.
The session will be in English, but if you would like interpretation, it's available in Spanish, French, and Azerbijani and you can grab the headphones here.
We're very happy to have with us today a panel of distinguished speakers.
First, we would have opening remarks from our regional director.
She's a bit late, but she will join us shortly.
We also have a prerecorded message from Mr.
Idris Adia, the Acting Director of resilience and Climate Action Department from the Islamic Development Bank.
If the team can support me with the video from ISDB My dear colleague Grana from UN Habitat, distinguished colleagues, partners and participants, it is a great pleasure to join you virtually on this important session on nature based solutions for resilient Arab cities and to mark the launch of this joint UN Habitat Islamic Development Bank publication.
I deeply regret to be enabled to be with you in person today.
At the sumi Development Bank, we are proud to partner with human habitat in advancing practical, scalable approaches that respond to the complex and interconnected challenges facing the Arab region.
Ranging from rapid urbanization and climate change to water scarcity and environmental degradation.
These pressures demand also integrated solutions not only to strengthen infrastructure, but also to restore and protect the natural ecosystems upon which our cities depend.
Nature based solutions offer a powerful pathway forward.
They allow all of us to rethink urban development and move beyond conventional approaches.
By investing in ecosystems, we can improve service delivery, reduce climate change risks and impacts, enhance livability, and create opportunities for job creation and economic growth.
This collaboration comes at a pivotal moment for the IDB as we are launching our ten year strategy.
This strategy places strong emphasis on environmental stewardship, resilience building, human capital development as core pillars of sustainable development.
So this joint event reflects our commitment to supporting our member countries in building systems that are not only economically viable, but also environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive.
The publication we launch today is an important contribution to this vision.
By compiling diverse case studies from across the Arab region, it demonstrates that nature based solutions are already delivering results, often grounded in local knowledge and adapted to specific environmental and social context.
The examples gathered in the study provide practical guidance to policymakers, practitioners, and investors, while also helping to bridge the knowledge gap that has often limited the scaling up of such solutions.
However, to fully realize the potential of nature based solutions, we must go further.
We must embed them into national and city level planning frameworks, strengthen enabling policies, and mobilize innovative financing at scale, including Islamic finance.
Partnerships, such as the one we celebrate today will be essential in achieving these goals.
At the Islamic Development Bank, we remain committed to working with our partners to unlock investment, build capacity, and support our member countries in integrating nature based solution into comprehensive urban development and infrastructure systems.
We hope that this publication will serve not only as a knowledge resource, but also as a catalyst for action.
Helping to inspire replication, inform investment, and accelerate the transition towards more resilient and sustainable cities across the Arab region.
I thank you and wish you a productive and engaging discussion.
We thank Mr.
Iriza for the opening remarks and for setting the scene for the session.
We were hoping that ISDB could make it and participate in W with us, but we are sure that we will have a lot of future engagements.
We are happy to have with us, Mr.
Ran Hadea, Regional Director of the UN Habitat Regional Office for Arab States to provide the opening remarks.
Good morning, distinguished speakers and dear colleagues, of course, ladies and gentlemen, it's really a pleasure for me to be with you today to launch this joint publication with the Islamic Development Bank on nature based solutions in the Arab region and to discuss a topic that is really critical to the future of our cities and communities.
The role of nature based solutions in strengthening resilience and advancing sustainable development.
As we all witness, the Arab region faces growing pressures from rapid urbanization, water scarcity, land degradation, and climate change.
More than 60% of the population of the Arab region live in cities now, 60% of the people live in urban areas.
And that increases pressure, of course, on the infrastructure and natural resources.
The region is already one of the most water stressed regions in the world.
We have 14 Arab countries, among the 25 most water scares globally that we host them in our region.
At the same time, we witness rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and environmental degradation are really threatening livelihoods and infrastructure and the ecosystem of our cities and it and their resilience.
Some parts of the region, these challenges are further compounded by conflict, as we all know and see, unfortunately, and the damage to the infrastructure, the degradation of the ecosystems and loss of the livelihoods for sure increase vulnerabilities and make a recovery when we work on recovery and reconstrucction much more complex and much more difficult.
This highlights the urgency of adopting solutions that are not only effective but also adaptable and sustainable.
This is where nature based solutions come in, and this is where the session is important for us to engage in and participate in.
Nature based solutions provide a practical and cost effective pathways to strengthen resilience.
They allow us to work with nature to address climate risks while improving service delivery and restoring the ecosystems and enhancing the quality of life in our cities.
Athana habitat nature based solutions are central and part and parcel of our new strategic plan, the 26 29 strategic plan, and it is also part and very important element that we take into consideration in our work and our support for sustainable urbanization across the region.
So we work closely with member states, with our counterparts, with governments.
Municipalities, are very important counterparts and local communities to translate these approaches into action through the technical assistance that we provide, policies, support, and partnerships.
For example, our urban ecosystem based adaptation guidelines support cities in integrating nature based solutions into planning and investment processes.
Jordan, we supported the Greater Aman municipality in mainstreaming nature based solutions into its planning law, which demonstrated how institutional integration can drive systematic change.
Across the region, the Arab region, UN habitat is already advancing nature based solutions across the region through real tangible projects and implementation on the grounds.
That varies.
The scheme varies from addressing trans boundaries, sand and dust storm like the project we have in Iraq, and Kuwait where we worked to address the issue and the challenge of sand and dust.
To also water, energy, food ecosystems, the nexus which we pilot and which addresses agrolic systems in Jordan and Lebanon.
Rainwater harvesting is also another very important topic that we work on and urban greening, and we work on these topics, piloting interventions in Tunisia, in Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.
The green corridors and the tree planting in Bahrain is another example, and the Perma culture sites in Jordan and Lebanon is another very important project and pilot project that we were able to pilot with our stakeholders and partners in Lebanon and Jordan and the hybrid green gray storm water systems in Jordan is yet another example.
This is to tell you how important for us it is for us as UN habit in the way we implement the strategic plan to provide the proper support to our counterparts to work on issues that relate to the environment with the lens of focusing on providing nature based solutions.
However, a key challenge remains, which is knowledge and experience on nature based solutions in the region.
So this is still fragmented and still not sufficiently documented.
We have a number of examples, we have a number of success stories, but we're not documenting enough.
This is why we are especially pleased today to launch this publication because it captures this.
And the title of the publication, as we all know, is Nature Based Solutions in the Arab Region, a collection of case studies.
This is I'm very proud that we were able to develop this publication in partnership with the Islamic Development Bank who were not able to come, but they were supposed to join us in this session.
This publication brings together nearly 80 practical examples from across the Arab region from urban greening to flood risk reduction and integrated water, energy and food systems.
It shows how nature based solutions can be adapted to different contexts while delivering multiple benefits.
More importantly, it demonstrates that these solutions are scalable and adaptable to other contexts.
They are community driven and capable of linking environmental sustainability with inclusive growth and resilience.
We hope that this publication will help to bridge some of the knowledge gap because it is there and it's big, and we hope also that it support informed policy making because this is lacking and especially in our region and inspire further action across the region.
So today's session is an opportunity to strengthen the collaboration and identify practical steps to scale up nature based solutions across the region.
So your engagement in this session is really important and key for us to enable us to do that.
I look forward to this productive discussion and to building more partnerships that can deliver tangible impact for our cities and our communities.
Please share with us your experiences, your input, your thoughts so that we can work together and provide better impact on our cities in terms of building their resilience and their flexibility.
So thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Ra, not only for shedding light on the challenges, but also the solutions that are in place and this is why this publication is very important for us to shed light on the efforts that are made in the region in terms of nature based solutions.
I know that you have a lot of engagements, but if you have a few minutes, just a couple of minutes so I can invite the panelists and we can have a group photo for the official launch.
Thank you, Maria.
I invite now doctor Zena Zen, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, Capital University, Egypt, and miss Dim Abub, the head of Country program, your inhabitat Jordan.
Mr.
Eliassbi, head of the Division of Relations with Professionals, Ministry of National Territorial Planning, Urbanism, Housing and City Policy, Kingdom of Morocco.
Mr.
Aya Mohana, the regional Specialist in resilience and Risk informed Development, Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery for Building Resilience, UN the P Regional Bureau for Arab States.
If we can have a group photo maybe before we start the panel, very quickly.
Wishing you a very good discussion.
I'm sure you'll make use of it.
You have the experts, expertise from the ground, and also from academia, exactly.
This is all what we need, and I'm really sorry that I have to go.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Rana.
We will start the discussion with doctor Zena Zn, who is the lead author of the publication.
Doctor Zena, if you can briefly share with us some insights on the publication itself and briefly introduce it and share the key messages, the key lessons learned, in particular, how this publication defines and frames NBS in the context of the Arab region and how it's intended to support policymakers and practitioners working on resilient urban development.
Thank you.
Thank you, Yasmin, so much and it's my pleasure to be here.
I would like to start when we first started working on this publication.
It was a very unique mission because it was not only a task, but rather a belief we all shared about the importance of nature based solutions.
We also shared something else.
We shared that we are all in one region in the Arab region, which as doctor Rana mentioned, it's a region that is already facing rapid urbanization, increasing climate risks, water scarcity, and environmental degradation.
And also it sometimes faces conflicts and displacement.
At the same time, our urban systems in the region remain highly resource intensive and vulnerable as well.
The application was developed in response to a key gap where nature based solutions are increasingly discussed globally.
Knowledge on locally relevant and scalable urban nature based solution is very rare and very undocumented, as we mentioned earlier.
Our aim was not simply to collect case studies, but to help shape a regional understanding of what nature based solutions mean in our context.
One important contribution of the publication was reframing nature based solutions through regional relevance.
We identified four major categories.
We started mentioning nature based solutions into the four main aspects, water management and resilience, coastal and marine ecosystem restoration, urban greening and climate adaptation, agroecology, and sustainable land management.
These four categories reflects the real priorities of the Arab cities.
Reflecting water scarcity, flood resilience, cooling overheating cities, restoring ecosystems, and even improving the quality of our life in our cities.
Another critical message in the publication is that the Arab region is not actually adopting nature based solution as a newly introduced concept.
But in reality, many of our communities have already practiced nature based solutions adaptations for centuries.
The publication highlights indigenous and traditional knowledge systems.
As we can see here, for example, in Amen, we have a flash system representing decentralized water governance and groundwater management.
In Morocco, we have tars demonstrating gravity based water distribution, and in Algeria, we have traditional fogata systems, which offer valuable lessons in climate resilience and water harvesting and gravity based water distribution.
We have actually used nature based solution historically in the Arab region.
The reminds us that innovation in the region can also mean rediscovering and adapting existing ecological intelligence and practices.
One other demonstration the publication provides is that scalable examples already exist in the region.
Just like doctor Rana highlighted, we have already many practices in different cities and countries in the Arab world.
In Egypt, we have river bank filtration processes that provide low cost water supply.
In Jordan, we have green infrastructure projects.
We have also constructed wetlands and hybrid ecological treatment systems in our main.
We have coastal restoration examples like mangroves and other practices in many cities and countries in the Arab world.
The issue is not whether solutions exist, it's how we move from isolated practices to systematic integration.
And here we move to the importance of having an enabling environment.
This is one of the recommendations and the highlights of the publication as well.
So in terms of policies, we believe that nature based solutions need to move beyond the environmental aspects and projects and become embedded in urban planning, infrastructure, housing, and resilient frameworks.
Also, we need governance coordination.
So nature based solutions sit across many sectors like the water, urban planning, housing, environment, transport, disaster risk reduction.
With this coordination, implementation in the region, we remain fragmented.
Of course, financing because nature based solutions are often perceived as softer or less bankable compared to other solutions that are gray infrastructure, for example.
But in reality, many nature based solutions offer long term economic and environmental and social benefits.
We need stronger valuation frameworks and financing model for nature based solutions.
Of course, we need more capacity building and knowledge exchange within the region, between different cities and different practices and experiences because we often lack the technical understanding of the solutions and the technical skills needed for its maintenance and sustainability.
This is why also the publication extends beyond case studies.
It also proposes a regional collaboration mechanism connecting researchers, policymakers, practitioners, organizations, young professionals, and cities working on urban nature based solutions across the Arab region.
It's like a platform for connecting expertise and exchanging knowledge because scaling requires ecosystems, not isolated actors.
I would also like to end by highlighting the role of academia and research in this process because through evidence generation and criteria, critical evaluation and criteria development for understanding the nature based solutions in our region, it will remain vague case studies and vague understanding of these solutions.
Also, education is very important because while we are understanding nature based solutions, it's important to educate future architects and urban planners about how important it is to integrate them into the planning and design practices.
So that's a brief introduction.
Thank you so much, doctor Zena, for highlighting the main aspects and the objective of the publication and also shedding light on the enabling environment and the checkpoints that we need to have in order to scale up NBS in the Arab region.
We now have with us, I think, Mr.
Bradley Heller, the lead climate change specialist mitigation from the Islamic Development Bank online.
We are sad that you're not with us Bradley.
We were together in the cop 30 during the soft launch of the publication.
We now are in the official launch.
We wish you were here with us.
Just checking if you are connected and can hear us.
Yes.
Thanks, Jasmine.
I can hear you loud and clear.
Are you able to hear me? We can hear you well, we can see you.
We can see you.
Hi, Bradley.
Good to see you.
I think Zena mentioned the importance of finance and this is a good segue for our question to you from the perspective of development banks, which are increasingly prioritizing climate resilience and sustainability.
What role do you see Islamic development bank playing in advancing nature based solutions and where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth and investment in the coming years? Over to you, Bradley.
Thank you so much.
Yes, ma'am.
And also thank you to Regional Director Rana was lovely to hear doctor Zanu, Alna and also the UN Habitat team.
Apologies.
We cannot be there today.
We would have really liked to have been present with you all.
Um, first, I would like to say how much we appreciate to work with you and habitat on this report.
As doctor Zanu said, it showcases an impressive range of locally driven efforts and traditional approaches which are already underway, and I think it's really important to catalog some of these, which are already effective and have been operating at the community level or more broadly for quite a long time.
But also, I think the report helps to highlight the significant potential of further implementation and investment in NBS across the Arab region.
So what I thought I would do is just share some recent progress that's been made, as well as some upcoming opportunities to help advance NBS.
And I'll cover these across three categories of opportunities.
So the first one is that I think that it'll take a combination of both conventional and innovative financing modalities to scale up NBS.
For example, at ISDB and also at other multilateral development banks, we can help to mainstream MBS within core infrastructure and urban investment.
So rather than treating MBS as a standalone environmental project, although there may be certainly some of both, MDBs can look at integrating NDS into transport, housing, water, and municipal services portfolios.
So this could be embedding green infrastructure into urban drainage, coastal protection, and affordable housing development, for example.
Secondly, regarding innovative financing, in 2019, the Islamic Development Bank launched a sustainable finance framework under which it issues green and sustainability support.
And if we look closely at the frameworks green categories, we can see that this includes scope for investments in sustainable water and wastewater management, pollution prevention and control, and environmentally sustainable management of living resources and land use.
The cover many topics that are contained within the report.
And just as an example, in October 2025, the ISDB issued a 500 million Euro green support, which takes out total green and sustainability S issuance by Islamic Development Bank to almost $6 billion.
Now, for those less familiar with S, this is the Islamic equivalent of bonds.
So the idea here is that you can help to crowd in private sector finance for investments that can deliver public goods benefits.
Another example related to Islamic financing, which is emerging is around WAC.
And so we recently completed a report on Islamic finance and the climate agenda with the World Bank Group, which looked at a WA forest example.
And this is where endowed land is permanently protected and managed for reforestation, biodiversity conservation, and carbon sequestration, whilst also generating local livelihoods for sustainable forest based economic activity.
So these are some examples of some innovative approaches which could help to scale MBS.
Secondly, when many people think of multilateral development banks, they think of lending institutions.
But we also play quite a strong role in knowledge generation and methodology development.
The report we're talking about today is an example of some of that knowledge generation.
In the Manna region, IDB in collaboration with the International Labor Organization and Cambridge Econometrics, conducted quantitative modeling of climate policy scenarios across the region.
And what this did was highlight scenarios on emerging labor market dynamics and economic opportunities associated with the transition to low carbon climate resilient development pathways, including investments in NBS.
So we see this as an output that can help inform policy making and support decision makers in the region.
Also, Yasmin mentioned that we collaborated at cop 30, but at cop 30 in Blem in Brazil, multilateral development banks jointly launched a common taxonomy and tracking methodology for nature finance, this has the potential to help enhance the mobilization and scaling for nature based solutions.
If we take as a comparison climate finance, which has a very well established harmonized methodology between the MDBs, in 2025, the MDBs jointly supported about $137 billion in climate finance globally.
So now that we have this taxonomy and tracking methodology, can this help to scale nature finance following a similar pathway? Finally, in terms of opportunities, there's quite a few upcoming initiatives in the region which I think can help in supporting NBS.
The first is the Middle East Green Initiative, which is envisioned to be one of the world's largest landscape restoration programs targeting the planting of 50 billion trees and which is looking ize substantial blended finance across the region.
This could occur across some of the categories in the framework that doctor nu referred to around sustainable land management, but also dust management and other topics around cities and settlements.
Additionally, at cop 16 from the UN CCD Convention, READ Global Drought Partnership was announced as the world's leading drought initiative.
And this is expected to support 74 of the world's most drought vulnerable countries, many of which are or some of which are in the Arab region.
And this partnership may be able to blend up to $150 million in grants with concessional lending.
And just to close, I think it's important to outline the opportunities, and there's certainly many of those, and that's exciting, and we could work together with other partners and MDBs to help realize some of those.
But just three points on some of the challenges.
I think the business model for MBS is not as well established as traditional hard infrastructure.
I think this was referred to by doctor Ran here as well.
So there's some challenges around fragmented financing, perceived risks, and revenue stream.
Also, our MDB is receiving requests for lending from member countries for NBS solutions.
So I think there's some work to be done in awareness raising and sharing examples of success as is done in this report.
Finally, in terms of challenges, the other thing to take into account is how will MBS function under changing climate scenarios.
And so this is an interesting aspect that also further work can be done on.
But for us, we're very proud to have been part of this partnership with you and habitat, and we're looking to work more closely with you and habitat on this topic and others as well.
So apologies again for not being, but thank you so much for having me.
Thank you so much, Bradley and likewise, we wish you were here with us in the official launch and thank you so much for shedding light on the progress, the recent progress of ISDB and also the opportunities that are there.
We hope you can stick around with us until the end of the session if possible, in case any of the audience have any questions.
We now move to miss Dimma Abuyv, the head of Country program UN Habitat Jordan.
Miss Dimma from your experience leading UN Habitat in Jordan, Could you share with us some insights in terms of implementing NBS on the ground and what impacts have you observed in local communities? Where do you see the greatest opportunities for scaling up for replication in other countries across the region? I can give you this for the slides.
Se Malekula Barkato.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm glad to be here to share with you this important achievement for Yuan habitat and Islamic Development Bank on publishing and launching guidelines on nature based solutions.
Let me start by an interesting statement for the SG, which always reminds us of the important role that municipalities play in responding to climate change, which is the climate battle will largely be won or lost in cities.
It's important and in Jordan, this statement, could not be more relevant.
I speak from Jordan, a country actually that is recognized for being the second most water scarce country in the world with very little water resources.
In Jordan groundwater is being depleted at three times compared to the national international standards, non revenue water stands at an estimated rate of 48%.
At the same time, also Jordan is hosting more than 450,000 registered refugees, which add more pressures on water resources and also others, basic services.
In response to these challenges, So these are some images for some flood incidences that took place in Jordan in a man Mali a few years ago where some of the important archaeological sites actually have been flooded due to heavy flood incident that took place in 2018.
In this context, N habitats works in Jordan is guided by one central principle, which is cities are not only where challenges are concentrated, but also they are where solution can be tested, institutionalized, and also scaled up.
So if you look at the screen, it shows our approaches to nature based solutions, which focus on support flood mitigation and urban water management.
Nature based solutions are also good to address the challenges of urban heat island, which we started to see during summer seasons in Jordan, particularly in Aman where the temperature reached up to 40 degrees Celsius degree.
Nature based solution in Jordan, also, we use it to safeguard cultural heritage and also climate, we focus on cultural heritage nexus.
Also right now, we're moving to mainstream eco system and nature based solution into urban planning processes by mainstreaming it in the regulatory framework of urban planning and greater municipality.
Also, these nature based solutions not only addresses water scarcity and climate change, but also they promote social inclusion, quality of life within the climate refugee nexus.
Finally, they are supporting green economy and livelihood opportunities for refugees and vulnerable Jordanian.
So let me our journey on implementing nature based solutions started in 2020 when we in collaboration with the Greater municipality, implemented a citywide flash flood risk assessment and hazard mapping for the city of Aman, and through this exercise, we identified more than 120 locations of flood hotspots area within the city.
And this exercise was not purely technical, but it became an important municipal decision making process or tool that directly informed investment prioritization for a greater municipality and also their strategic plan for the upcoming four years.
Building on this evidence based analysis, YN habitat implemented Azure Green Triangle Project, which has been, by the way, featured in this important publication.
The first of its kind and greater municipality.
We see here a quote from the mayor of Amman where he mentioned that this is a unique project that being implemented in Amman for the first time.
We look forward to it being implemented Cathalytic the coming years.
Following the success stories in Jordan, We have conducted a joint training workshop between IT and an Habitat focusing on nature based solution Aman.
As part of this training, we came up with the idea of also developing a national award where we can engage young population and university students and coming up with innovative ideas or nature based solution, engaging them and being part of coming up with solution, being like a problem solvers for for many climate change risks, and coming up with innovative ideas.
So following this exercise, we signed an agreement with the Dutch, embassy in Jordan, where we started to scale up this nature based solution, Aman following a green Azure triangle project, and now we are in the process of implementing, we finalized the design of five more nature based solutions and Aman targeting different urban typologies, including roundabouts, including medians to help actually increase the capacity of municipalities and how to plan cities which are more resilient to climate change and water scarcity.
The award that we developed in collaboration with with local NGO called RSCN it's called Environmental Legacy Makers Award, and this is the press conference where we launched the award in the presence of the Minister of Environment and also the Mayor of Aman.
These are the process through which we started the development of the award until we came up with three winning ideas.
These are some photos that shows Um, one of the ideas that was implemented in one of the location, flood hotspots location, which is staircases.
Amman is very well known for having thousands of staircases that connect different neighborhoods, which each other because Amman was originally built on seven Hills.
This kind of urban typologies became like waterfalls in the winter season.
So they became now a one type of nature based solution where we embedded the green solution and also a water detention to collect the water at the end of the staircase.
So this is one of the groups actually that won the award.
These are some also elements that the students put in the staircases.
These are inverted umbrella lamb, That aim also to collect water rainwater and reserve it in one of the water tanks beneath the staircases.
This is another location that the students focused on.
Aman is a car oriented city where we have hundreds perhaps thousands of parking plots.
One of the locations as the parking of a greater municipality.
Through this competition, the students transformed this parking lot into a nature based solution by testing different previous materials in Aman.
And also, this is the third location, which is the climate Academy, which is implemented in one of the public spaces in Eastern A Mas.
They put some rainwater gardens throughout this park.
Finally, we're moving from piloting these interventions to mainstreaming the nature based solution by developing a toolkit in collaboration with some Dutch experts.
The Dutch are very famous and well known for managing water, with their support, we're coming up with a toolkit.
That shows a step by step how municipalities can implement and mainstream nature based solutions in their day to day work.
These are some lessons learned from the Elma, from our work with the youth.
One of the lessons learned include that youth engagement brings more innovative, locally grounded and future oriented perspectives to urban and environmental challenges.
Also, this process taught us that young population are not only beneficiaries from these urban interventions, but can be active contributors problem solvers to some of them community based initiatives, engaging youth and early urban planning processes also contribute to building next generation of urban leaders and climate advocates in the Arab region.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, miss Dimma.
It's always inspiring to hear the experience of Jordan, and it's good to see that there are several NBS initiatives implemented on the ground and it's very visible that they have multiple co benefits, not just for climate adaptation.
Also another inspiring country, Morocco.
We now move to Mr.
Ilissb, the head of the Division of Relations with Professionals, Ministry of National Territorial Planning, urbanism, housing, and City Policy Morocco.
Mr.
Elias, Morocco has been really recognized for its proactive approach to sustainable urban development and climate resilience.
Can you share with us how the ministry is integrating nature based solutions into its national policies and territorial planning strategies? In particular, are there any initiatives or projects you would like to shed light on either ongoing or new projects that the ministry is working on towards operationalizing nature based solutions? Thank you, Esme, distinguished speakers, dear attendees.
I'm honored to participate in this panel dedicated to nature based solutions for resilient Arab cities.
As you know, today's cities are facing increasingly complex risks, including floods, landslides and extreme climate events.
Those challenges require us to rethink our traditional approaches to urban planning and housing in order to better integrate adaptation and prevention.
Within this context, we at the Ministry of Housing, has initiated a structured reflection on adapting the housing sector to climate change and an assessment of climate vulnerabilities and risks made it possible to identify the main hazards affecting urban and residential areas.
This assessment form the basis of later housing sector adaptation plan that we aim to strengthen the resilience of both the built environment and communities.
The plan is built around several strategic pillars.
Among them, strengthening housing resilience.
Consolidating governance and coordinating among stakeholders and also developing capacities through training and awareness raising and promoting sustainable financing mechanisms.
This plan also puts a strong emphasis on innovation, research and development, technology transfer, and international cooperation.
At the operational level, the plan promotes concrete approaches such as improving storm water management, adapting buildings to climate risks, and limiting urbanization in exposed areas, and also integrating green infrastructure into urban territories.
And it's within this direction of this adaptation plan that a pilot initiative currently under preparation has emerged.
It's the project of strengthening climate change resilience of residential neighborhoods in a pilot region in Morocco.
This project is led by our ministry in partnership with you and habitat Morocco and supported by the adaptation fund.
And following the approval of the concept notes, we are currently engaged in preparing the project document product, which aims to further define implementation and more details about the components of the project.
And in this perspective, permanent work to identify vulnerable neighborhoods has been carried out already in close coordination with consent municipalities, and this work relies on a structured methodology based on several criteria to choose those neighborhoods.
So I Within this pilot project beyond conventional approaches, we are aiming to integrate nature based solutions as a major level for territorial resilience.
So those solutions we're thinking about include greening intervention, natural stormwater management systems such as rain gardens, vegetated swals, green roofs, and water retention and infiltration solutions, as well as some other intervention that foresees stabilizing soils and reducing landslide risk through adapted plantations.
So those approaches offer multiple benefits.
They can contribute to reduce runoff of flood risks, improve rainwater infiltration, limit soil erosion, and strengthen resilience of local communities to extreme climate events.
They also help reduce over the long term the cost associated with the damage caused by climate change.
As a conclusion, nature based solutions that should not be viewed as secondary or purely environmental intervention.
Today, they represent a strategic lever for building cities and more resilient cities and more sustainable cities.
They would like to emphasize that decision through the presentation of this concrete experiences and also this report represents for us an important opportunity for exchange and for mutual learning.
We're basically going to have a look on this report to uh try to get inspired by some of the case studies of the report to help us to enhance the process of the preparation of our project.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Alias.
I think you will find a lot of case studies from Morocco in the publication which shows the amount of efforts that are being done in Morocco in terms of nature based solutions.
I'm also hopeful on the new adaptation fund projects, hopefully it will get accepted and it will have lots of positive results.
We now move to miss Aya Mona, the regional specialist in resilience and risk informed Development, disaster risk reduction and resilience and recovery for resilience building, UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States.
Miss Aya, from UNDP's regional perspective, what types of NBS or climate adaptation initiatives are showing the greatest potential for strengthening urban resilience in the Arab region and what factors are helping these approaches gain fction? Thank you, Ysmin and congratulations on the great work.
I look forward to reading the whole collection and thank you also to colleagues for your testimonies from the ground.
So from your NDP experience, especially in the Arab region, it's really becoming apparent to us that successful initiatives on nature based solutions and climate adaptations are those that are looking at the issue, not from strictly a green environmental perspective.
The approaches that are actually succeeding and are as seeming to work are the ones that are integrated into broader urban development and broader systems.
So think water, infrastructure, governance, urban planning, land management, and also business and livelihoods.
This is how we actually approach it at UNDP.
We have the risk inform development approach, and here we see risk as not an isolated thing that we need to budget for separately.
I mean, risk affects all economies and all aspects of a system.
Flooding, for example, damages heritage, it damages infrastructure, it disrupts businesses.
Heat waves also have an effect on energy systems and on productivity and on how we live day to day life in a city and water scarcity affects food and affects also our household life.
We need to see how we can adapt to climate, but also how we ensure that whatever we're deciding, whenever we're developing with climate change that we're ensuring that risk is not being augmented and that we're more exposed now to risk.
A good example here is what we do in Egypt.
We're currently implementing a GCF project in the North Coast and Nile Delta, and this is in partnership with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.
It's very key that we are working with that ministry and not the environment, for example, because it is very much looking at, yes, nature based solutions and soft coastal protection, especially with the interventions like dunes and dikes.
But also, we're looking at integrating that with broader coastal zone management and with climate risk information systems taken into account.
So it's not only that we're protecting coastlines, we are, but we're also helping guide local authorities on how to develop better on the longer term.
A example here is the work that we're doing through the Greening Sharman Shift Initiative.
And it is a greening project, but it's not geared towards greening per se.
It is geared towards enhancing the tourism sector in SHRM.
It's also looking at the economic sector and good investment.
Another interesting example that is upcoming is a program that we're finalizing now to be funded in Somalia.
We are about to work in 17 cities to combine sponge city approaches like green corridors, flood management, ecosystem restoration in conjunction with businesses, especially women and youth leads to make sure that they are engaged in that sector.
It is powerful because it connects adaptation to local development and economic resilience more broadly, not just environmental restoration.
We have other examples like projects in Dibbouti where we're looking at nature based solutions and not main urban centers, but more in peri urban settings.
So here we're looking at range land management and ecosystem restoration and water harvesting, but in very urban environments.
And there's a lot to be learned from how we implement nature based solutions in the secondary cities to be replicated in cities that are now sprawling in the Arab region.
And also, we see the ripple effect of whenever we enhance the life of rural communities, how that also has benefits on the urban settings through rural to urban migration and through urban poverty as well because we limit them So I would say the main four factors that why these approaches are actually gaining momentum and allowing us to replicate is yes, first, they respond to very practical concerns by local authorities because governments are interested very much in climate adaptation, but they are also usually come to own solutions that help reduce flooding, improve water security, cool cities, and basically ensure that business as usual is retained.
Another one is that these approaches are increasingly anchored into investment.
Cities want to know what to invest in.
Whenever we pitch nature based solutions as factors to increase their economies, they will very likely look into this.
In the Arab region, we already touched on looking at financing methods that are fit to context.
For example, Islamic financing that was mentioned.
The third one is that these approaches work best when they're embedded in governance systems that are integrated and not just treated as environmental or disaster risk reduction projects.
So we need to see nature based solutions in the Ministry of Finance, in the Ministry of Water, and the Ministry of Planning.
Finally, I think there's a growing recognition that nature based solution should not be just green infrastructure.
It should be the main infrastructure that is being implemented in all cities.
Yeah, I'm happy that the conversation is going that way.
I think the conversation is shifting to make nature based solutions an investment portfolio as well.
NDP has a big and wide investment portfolio in that.
Some of our projects are also with you on habitat and we're happy to work with you and we remain here to support on this agenda.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, miss Ay.
I think you've pinpointed a lot of very important points.
I know that we're running out of time, but I think it's an opportunity to ask the audience if you have any question, we can have one or two quick questions before we leave.
Okay.
If you can introduce yourself and tell us your question.
Thank you.
Thank you for the conference and the presentations.
So I'm Mohamed Vj, and I am an architect from Morocco and I work in a program for the preservation of and Caspar, which is our Earth heritage in Morocco.
And I just want to ask Zena for I don't know why the vernacular architecture was not part of the report because as we know, in the Arab region, vernacular architecture offer genuous solutions for re housing.
For example, for us in Morocco, we have the Earth villages and we don't need to build new houses.
We just restore those Earth villages and we offer people to stay in these Earth and villages.
I'm just wondering why this rich heritage of the Arab region was omitted from the report.
In, I can respond to the question and I can come in.
Thank you so much for the question.
Yes, indeed, vernacular architecture is a very important part, but I remember why we were working on the studies or compiling the case studies.
It was not very much documented in terms of the impact based on the categories we mentioned.
Maybe that's a good point because some of these practices are very intersecting with nature based solutions as we define it now, but sometimes it's not documented.
For example, I remember in Palestine, we had some specific use of water management in housing in historical or indigenous housing, but it was not documented.
But people keep mentioning it because it happened.
But we need to have this documented somehow.
I know some of the cases, of course, are documented, at least for Egypt.
For example, I know for Morocco, there might be some solutions, but that's a good point.
It can be added later on.
It can be documented in a way that that intersects with how we define it.
Thank you.
Also, if someone else would like to comment on this from the panel, I would be happy.
Yeah.
Thank you for your comments.
I do agree with you.
I think there's a lot of lessons learned from the ancient civilization, particularly in Jordan.
I keep mentioning that the Nabatinian civilization, for instance, which was a big civilization that built Petro archaeological site, award US world heritage site.
I think they built amazing water systems that we started to look right now into it and restore these water systems and also Roman systems to start collecting water again.
There's a huge infrastructure that we could reutilize for addressing climate change.
I always say that our ancient civilization were more sustainable than us, actually.
Thank you.
Thank you, Demon.
Thank you, Zen and I completely agree.
We try to capture to the best of our knowledge the available information, but there is a lot of local and indigenous knowledge that is not captured under the terminology of nature based solutions, but in different namings and different terminologies.
This is a very good point and a lessons learned and we hope that we will continue capturing and documenting what's happening in the region in terms of what has happened in the region in terms of nature based solutions.
Is there any other question before we end the discussion? Va, do you have a question? Sorry.
Question.
Thank you very much for the presentation.
My name is E Tk, I work at Enable, the Belgian International Coperation Agency.
I was just wondering if you could explain maybe some of the financing instruments that were used to finance those pilots or the mechanisms in what way some of the private actors were also included.
Thank you so much for the question.
Maybe Bradley, if you're still with us on the call, are you with us? Yes.
Sorry.
Yes.
I'm still here.
Yasmin.
In terms of the pilots, I think mostly I don't know the answer to that, but I think largely maybe community funded, municipal level or potentially from national governments.
Certainly, institutions such as the Islamic Development Bank and the MDBs typically work with government.
So we wait to see what the government is interested to invest in and then we can support them in that regard.
So Just as an example, for our bank, we do work quite a bit on affordable housing initiatives and increasingly we're integrating green infrastructure and entry based solutions into those systems.
For the specific case studies and pilots, so I'm not sure Yasmin or doctor Zu whether you have any more information there.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Bradley.
I think there is a section in the publication you'll find on financing and, if I'm not mistaken, different instruments that could be in place to scale up nature based solutions and what opportunities are there.
But of course, there is a lot of gaps that exist.
I'm really sorry, but we're running out of time, so we can close the discussion and then if you have any questions for our panelists, I invite you to talk bilaterally.
Thank you very much, everyone, and thank you for joining us.
Thank you for your time.
If you didn't get a chance to grab a copy of the publication, it will be available on the UN habitat website.
Very soon.
Thank you and thank you to all our distinguished panelists.
Thank you.