ONE UN - Resilient Arab Cities Good Practices and Opportunities for the Future (WUF13)

Good afternoon, dear colleagues, distinguished panelists, partners, friends.
I am certainly privileged and pleased to be your moderator for this very important discussion on resilient Arab cities, good practices and opportunities for the future.
My name is Ronald Jackson.
I'm the head of the Disastros Reduction Recovery and Resilience Building Team for UNDP globally, and I'm here with my colleague to shepherd this particular panel session, my colleague, Aya, who represents the Arab States team.
Dear colleagues, friends, on behalf of UNDP and UN Habitat, Regional Office for Arab States, I welcome you.
I also want to take this opportunity to say that the week of discussions have been an excellent one, not uniquely focused on the issue of housing, but touching on all of the tangential and relational issues that will make housing certainly a sustainable offer within the context of urban systems.
It has been really an enriching opportunity to see such a strong mix of city representatives and listening to those city representatives on the specific challenges and opportunities that are being presented to listen to practitioners, partners, academics in the one in this one forum, especially the colleagues who are here today.
I'm really eager to hear from the colleagues who will be sharing a little bit about resilience within the context of the Arab region.
I think one of the most interesting things about this region is that there is no such thing as a typical Arab city.
I'm sure those of you who know the Arab region will agree with me.
You have massive dense cities like Cairo and Casablanca, coastal cities facing sea level rise, rapidly growing secondary cities, cities recovering from conflict, cities facing water stress, desert cities, mountain cities, all with very different realities, capacities, and pressures.
And yet, despite that diversity, many of them are dealing with the same big questions around risk, resilience, housing infrastructure, and climate with each city using its resources to cope, develop, to innovate, all to give the best life possible to the city's inhabitants.
Today, cities are on the front line of almost everything.
It is the theater of risk today and in the future.
Climate shocks, heat waves, flooding, water scarcity, displacement, infrastructure stress, unemployment, housing pressures, conflict.
These challenges are seen clearly in cities, but cities are also where solutions are happening and happening the fastest.
That's what this session is about today.
It's not abstract conversation on resilience, but practical examples of what citizen partners are already doing underground.
Through two sections, we'll hear today about resilience planning in the Arab region, first from the regional and national experts that make it their mission to empower urban communities from resilience work in Egypt to experience from Syria and adapting to water scarcity and an innovative urban planning and financing approach.
In Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
We're happy to be contributors to their efforts in UNDP.
We see urban resilience as much more than disastrous management.
It's about how cities plan and grow, how they protect vulnerable communities, how they integrate climate considerations into infrastructure and housing, how they create systems that can continue to function under stress, and importantly, how local governments and their counterparts and communities themselves are at the forefront leading these processes.
We invest in urban resilience in very practical ways in Damiea through risk information and water management, in Marrakesh, through sustainable city planning, green infrastructure, mobility, and circular economy approaches, in Sharmel Sheikh, through green transformation of tourism, city using renewables and low carbon solutions, in Tunis, through resilient waste management, in Eastern Bhuta through water scarcity adaptation, wastewater treatment, and integrated natural resource management, and in Saudi Arabia through support to future cities, spatial planning reform, municipal capacity, and human centered development planning.
More cities are on the pipeline with new projects aiming to support vulnerable communities in Yemen, Somalia, and other Arab states.
What gives me optimism and my colleagues in the team optimism is that resilience is not any longer a niche conversation.
Cities are recognizing that resilience is development.
It's economic resilience, it's social resilience, it's infrastructure resilience, and climate resilience all wrapped up into one.
I would say it's about resilient development, it's about resilient human development.
Today is really an opportunity to exchange practical lessons, talk honestly about what works and what doesn't work.
And hopefully think together about how we move from small pilots to large scale actions across the Arab region.
With that, let me officially welcome you all.
And to begin this interesting session with Section one, as I said, we have two sections.
Let me invite first speaker, doctor Mahmoud Fatalah and I hope I pronounced that right, sir.
Doctor Fatalah is an Egyptian economist currently serving as Director of the Department of Environmental and Meteorological Affairs at the League of Arab States since 2020.
In addition, he has been tasked with overseeing the Department of Housing, water resources, and disastrous Reduction at the League of Arab States since 2024.
He has a very compelling bio.
I won't have time to go through all of this, but he has led a long and distinguished career.
Let me yield the floor to you, doctor Fatalah.
Your question is, The League of Arab States has been playing an increasingly important role in advancing regional cooperation around climate resilience, disastrous reduction, and sustainable urban development.
From your perspective, what are some of the good practices around resilience on a regional level and where do you see the strongest opportunities for regional collaboration towards local action in the Arab States? Wherever you wish to.
Thank you.
I would like to thank Mr.
Ronald for giving me this important opportunity to share with you the regional vision of Arab countries.
I would like to start by by this.
This is the key risk facing the world today as World Economic Forum.
According to World Economic Forum, which is very important report, let us see the long term risk The first one is extreme weather event, second, biodiversity loss, third, critical change in health system, and fourth national natural resources shortage.
All of those are environmental risk that is impacted mainly the cities.
So Cities here were affected by sea level rise and integrated resilience, is very important to urban planning and achieve saving up to $4 every one invested in risk reduction.
Over 60 of Arab region's population currently lives in cities and this is expected to rise to 75 by 2050.
Over than that, developing goals was all achieved the local urban level, over 80% of GDB in Arab countries is produced in cities.
So what we can do for cities in this regard.
I I will present to you some of our efforts in the Arab region regarding this regard.
The Arab strategy for disaster risk reduction is the main umbrella of our roadmap or the regional framework for the 22 Arab countries in this regard and it's adopted in 2018.
This is aligned with the Sunday framework and disaster risk reduction 2015 to 2030.
The strategy has an Arab coordination mechanism for disaster risk reduction.
The Arab coordination mechanism is developed in vision and priorities and the key implementation areas for the strategy, and also strengthening an institutional mechanism and monitor implementation and also work for reduce the negative impact of course by natural disaster and support capacity building for Arab states.
How that be implemented.
The implementing entities for the strategy was well implemented by the League of Arab States and United United Nations Special Agencies, media, international development, civil society and the regional centers for disaster risk reduction in the region.
This is the main stakeholders in this regard.
The member of coordination mechanism contains national focal points, ministerial council, international agencies, and the Arab coordination and civil societies also civil society is very important in this regard and specialized Arab organization also.
Um a Besides this, we have international partners in this regard and disaster risk reduction contents of EU and the African Union, United Nations, South America and China and Japan.
This mainly depends on the framework of Arab cooperation with international international countries and major blocs in region.
And we established our program for a program for enhancing city resilience and multi hazard disaster risk reduction.
This is the main program that we started related to city resilience with cooperation with UN DRR and UN Habitat.
The vision for this guard is to have safe and resilient Arab cities capable of facing multiple risk and adapting climate change and to protect people and communities.
The main pillars or the main areas is empowering local communities and building capacities, strengthening infrastructure, and integrated disaster risk reduction in the planning and the concept in the planning efforts.
And also establishing monitoring and evaluation mechanism to track the progress and the advancing knowledge and innovation and encouraging investment and financing.
I encouraging investment and financing.
I think this is a very important point in this regard because access to finance in Arab region is very limited.
So this is very important in this regard.
The implementation mechanism of the City resilience Program consists of depends on Arab strategy for disaster risk reduction and Kuwait declaration, regional consultation of meeting of priorities in Geneva, Sendai Framework, sustainable development goals, and new urban agenda, UN habitat strategy.
The collaboration of all those points is included in the city resilient program in the region.
Are the key pillars of this program? The program building on seven pillar.
Developing conceptual and logistive framework to integrate disaster risk reduction and into urban planning, and strengthening infrastructure and essential service and water, energy transportation and also different sectors, building capacities for municipalities and local communities to enabling them to lead urban preparedness and response.
Enhancing communities and the private sector participation is also one of the main pillar and developing the Arab network for cities and the expert in urban resilience for exchange experience, knowledge, and supporting scientific research is also one of our pillar, especially technologies like AI, GIS and remote sensing.
Finally, establishing the Arab monitoring follow up and evaluation mechanism related to this program.
Finally, I I suggest four points as opportunities for the future.
Knowledge sharing platform and knowledge sharing platform is very important to collaborate different pillars and stakeholders in the same idea.
Urban risk observatories has also recommended and regional guidelines and finance pipelines as I just talked about limited limited access to finance for the Arab region.
This is just a brief point about the division or the program of city resilience in the Arab region.
I'm happy to listen to any comment or question from your side.
Thank you.
Thank you, doctor Fa Fatah, sorry.
We will have an opportunity to pose some questions to you, I'm hoping, but what I will do is I will go through all the speakers and then we'll invite everyone to the panel to perhaps engage in a little bit of a discussion.
Certainly, we take note of the seven by seven, what I call your seven pillar strategy and seven pillar program, which is certainly multi stakeholder in its nature.
And your closure with the opportunities for us to really further invest in the objectives of city resilience, focusing on the Urban Risk Observatory, the financing pipeline opportunities for knowledge sharing across the region, and the importance of developing guidelines.
Your Arab strategy, which is well aligned with the global frameworks.
I think the key thing here is how do we bridge global regional with the national approach.
Our next speaker in this first section, as I said before for those just joining us, we're going to have two sections, one which really focuses on a broader regional overview, and then we get into some specific case studies.
We're going to now invite doctor Fad Hamdan.
Doctor Hamdan has extensive experience in conducting resilience assessments and developing urban resilience plans for cities facing a wide range of threats.
And systemic risk including economic and environmental, social, political, and security related challenges.
Doctor Faria, as you come to the podium, let me pose my question to you.
First of all, congratulations on launching the new state of the Arab Cities report, and thank you as well I hear round of applause for the dock.
Thank you as well for the collaboration around it.
UNDP was very happy to have contributed to this effort.
From your perspective, what are some of the key findings that stood out most strongly in the report, particularly around resilience, urban vulnerability, and the opportunities that are emerging for Arab cities moving forward? I yield the floor to you, sir.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator, for this introduction and this round of applause.
This current version of the State of Arab Cities report that looks at housing, land, and basic services as systems recognizes that these do not occur in a vacuum, but rather against a regional background of conflict, fragility, and climate change.
And this regional background of conflict, fragility, and climate change is giving rise to a group of systemic risks that are interacting together, cascading, creating non feedback loops, and posing severe charges.
These systemic risks are varied and they vary from informality, informal settlements, and inequality, conflict, climate change, and human mobility and displacement and disaster, Black water scarcity, where the region is among the suffering from the most water scarcity, drought, heat stress, non sustainable consumption and production patterns, especially to do with energy, Other systemic risks include urban public health.
You'd be surprised how much these have in common with other systemic risks that maybe we're more accustomed to speak about and urban flooding, be it for coastal cities or flash floods or floods.
These are the systemic risks.
This is the innovative lens that the report tries to provide, the added value, if you want, of the report.
And for each country, it looks at these systemic risks and how they interact and impact housing, land, and basic services.
But actually, it does more than that.
It looks at the interaction between the drivers of risk, namely informal settlements as a driver of risk or if you want to call it unchecked urban expansion or whatever, weak governance, weak risk governance, weak urban governance, and weak urban risk governance as a driver of risk.
Poverty and environmental degradation.
So it looks at these risk drivers and how they interact with drivers of conflict and violent extremism because that's the region that we are living in.
And whether it is lack of socioeconomic opportunities or marginalization and discrimination or prolonged unresolved conflict, or, um, climate change and water scarcity and so on.
And it looks at the interaction of combined those two groups of drivers combined with the drivers of housing adequacy of housing land, if I may call them HLB as housing land and basic services to save some time and not keep repeating them.
Housing land and basic services adequacy, namely macroeconomic conditions and ease of financing, as my colleague was just mentioning, um, um, poverty, urban planning, land governance, land management, and land taxation, impact of conflict and disaster on housing, land, and basic services.
And once we do that for each of the countries, for each of the systemic risks, we find some commonalities that perhaps are not immediately apparent before one does this exercise.
Can I say that we did not do any actual research.
We were looking at international frameworks, getting the data from international frameworks, and then qualitatively if you want analyzing it and linking it together.
So for example, for conflict and fragility, we looked at the OECD fragility framework and another one.
For the water, we looked at the integrated water risk management frameworks available for health.
We looked at the global health security index and so on.
We looked at the first thing at the different factors and sub factors that each of these frameworks identify as contributing to vulnerability.
So the first thing that becomes apparent is that the importance of adaptive capacities or lack of adaptive capacities, meaning the capacity for long term planning, which is obviously necessary in order to address these systemic risks that are cascading and interacting.
So that is one very important thing that when there is the highest vulnerability, it coincides with the lack of coping capacities.
The other is the issue of data, And we find I mean, this is supposed to be State of Arab Cities report, but most of the data is when available.
It is at the national level, if not proxy data, proxy indicators.
It's at the national level.
And it is old, and it is not sufficiently disaggregated in order to be able to inform evidence based decision making processes and policies.
So, this actually somehow maybe implies that more often than not, not always, this data is being generated in order to report to international frameworks rather than to inform local or national policies.
The third commonality is that, um, The issue of financing and long term financing is very, very important.
We applied this for the eight systemic risks, sometimes each risk individually, sometimes some risks in combination.
Let's take first one, and then if there is some more time, I'll do another one or two.
Let's take the informal settlements.
Of course, now what I'm saying does not imply to, we also tried to do the analysis per Arab sub region.
So Arab least developed countries, Maghreb, Mashraq and GCC countries, but I don't have time to go through all of them, so I'm not going to differentiate now, but we find, for example, that in some countries mall in ALDC, the percentage of populations living, if you want to call it informal settlements or whatever the term is these days, exceeds 70%.
The type of houses that is made of durable construction or durable materials in some instances is less than 25%.
We look at this informal settlement and this very important as a form of spatial inequality.
This spatial inequality is superimposed on other types of inequality, for example, health, education and income level as reflected, for example, in the human or in the inequality Adjusted Human Development Index by the UNDP, where in some countries, we see the loss in human development is around 35% because of inequality and other inequalities related to gender, which again is reflected in the gender Development Index in addition to others, where we see The gender development in disease compared to the men, woman to me is as low as 40% and it's superimposed onto other forms of inequality related to, for example, access to food security or food insecurity, where we see in some countries, food insecurity is around 80%.
So this analysis, Mr.
Moderator, shows the multidimensional deprivation that shapes and interacts with urban vulnerability.
Then on the other hand, this is also happening together with the lack of tenure security, where in some cases, there is no data on tenure security.
And then if you look at governance indicators such as the rule of law, which can help enforce tenor security, you find the countries where the weakest tenor security with the highest tender insecurity are the countries also with the weakest rule of law indicators.
If you look at other governance indicators such as, um, such as government effectiveness, which can play an important role in filling the gap in, for example, filling the gap in affordable housing affordable adequate housing.
You again see the cases where there is the highest need for affordable housing is also the cases where there is a very weak government effectiveness indicators.
Together, of course, the private sector can play an important role in the provision of affordable housing.
But again, we see the regulatory quality governance indicators which have a role to play in regulating, enabling, encouraging, and empowering the private sector, again, having very low indicators, scores at times when it is most needed.
And this comes on top of other indicators that we looked at to do with community engagement, be it the civil society participation index or what is referred to as the BTI index for community engagement.
So this was one of the risks that shows this interaction between the different factors.
I think I will not go through the other risks, but maybe just take a few more minutes to say two things.
First, that the report provides recommendation on how housing land and basic services can be recommendations under three broad categories.
One, how housing land and basic services can be risk informed, two, how to manage, prevent, if possible, or mitigate, respond, recovery, et cetera, to each of the systemic risks.
And thirdly, very importantly, how to address the commonalities that I spoke to earlier on in my presentation on governance, on data and on finance, and it calls for recognizing that these should be addressed in an integrated way across different government administrative levels and with different stakeholder groups because it is a systemic issue that must be addressed in a systemic way.
That's one thing I want to mention and the other thing, briefly, I think it has to do with agency as well.
We have to understand that all these inequalities that we are referring to is preventing people from taking advantage of the huge opportunities that cities can provide.
The huge networking opportunities that cities can provide.
This is how we see it.
Once these are addressed, people have more agency to take full advantage of the opportunities.
He just parenthesis for the urban planners, I'm not one or the architects and I'm not one either.
But it is often said that the communication revolution is the first time in 6,000 years to create such a qualitative jump in networking opportunities.
And the last time this happened on such a level is when people started moving to cities 6,000 years ago.
I mean, it is these opportunities that we can enable people to have agency to do if we address these urban inequalities leading to multidimensional deprivation leading to urban vulnerabilities.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, doctor Hamdan.
I think you really touched on some very important points here.
I think the context, the governance issues, the poverty issues, the environmental degradation, I see them and conflict, violent extremism, again, underscores this view that we're living in very volatile, uncertain, and complex and ambiguous context.
I think your presentation within the context of the report brings us out quite strongly.
The importance of the data systems and their role in providing adequate decision intelligence.
For national and local policy making is the very important issue that you've raised and it begs the question because you brought up the point about whether these systems are built to report externally or to drive internal planning and in my mind, it is a quiet point of reflection for those of us in the multilateral system.
About how we engage on providing these types of, you know, support to enable what I call use nationally for decision intelligence and less of an obsession about reporting externally.
We need to find that balance.
I think that came out quite strongly in some of your question.
The multidimensional deprivation that interact with urban management and the challenges this is deriving in terms of our efforts to ensure that these cities can extract the appropriate resilience dividends.
Of course, this big question of ensuring that there's agency in efforts to deal with these complex challenges.
I think these are all key takeaways, notwithstanding the recommendation that the report presents and I won't go through them.
We want to hear your views certainly from maybe the audience questions that will come.
But so that you are a little bit comfortable and that you will now become a part of the audience for our next set of speakers, I'm going to release you for this round to join the audience and then, you know, quickly invite my next round of panelists to join us up here.
So you're released from the podium for now.
I'm going to call you back, so you're free to join in the audience, doctor Fatalo.
But now I want to turn to Um, the next stretch of our conversation, what you've heard from the League of Arab States and also from doctor Hamad, really are some very important regional perspectives which are reminding us about resilience in the Arab States and the fact that it cannot be seen from a single lens.
You really ought to give the gentleman a round of applause.
I didn't hear a final applause then because I think what they've done What they've done is really unearthed some very important issues coming at a very, very critical juncture.
So what really stands out across both discussions for me is that despite the diversity of the context, many cities are navigating similar pressures, similar pressures.
We heard that very clearly, certainly within the context of the State of the Arab cities report.
But we also heard something equally important.
There is already a lot happening on the ground.
A lot of knowledge exists in that space.
Rich partnerships are being formed, and ambitious goals around innovations and key leadership being unlocked across that process.
So at UNDP, we value the partnerships with the League of Arab States and we're happy to contribute to the report and the spaces that provide the collaboration and connection both within the global conversation, regional and local conversation, most importantly.
With that, I'm pleased then to move us to hear some very compelling stories from Arab cities.
We're going to hear from some practitioners and partners working on resilient solutions actually on the ground.
First, let me invite, I'm going to invite all of them up by reading their bio, and I'm going to invite you as I read your bio to take the stage, and you can feel free to present either from your station or from the podium as you like, as you feel comfortable to deliver your ten minute reflection.
First, miss Felicity Kane, miss Cain is UN Habitat Syria's deputy Country Director.
She holds over 15 years of experience with the UN, private sector, and NGOs, successfully leading teams and delivering complex programs in architecture, urban planning, sustainable urban development, and cultural heritage conservation.
She is passionate about cities, urban heritage, and climate resilience programs in crisis recovery contexts.
Miss Cain, please join me onstage.
The next speaker I want to invite on stage is Mr.
Ahmed Risk.
I hope I pronounce your name well.
Please forgive me if I didn't.
He is the Country Director for UN Habitat Egypt.
Before his current assignment, he was Deputy CEO for Policy and International Cooperation at the Export Development Authority and later joined United Nations Industrial Development Organization New Nido as a national Program Officer at the Regional Hub Office in Egypt.
By 2022, he was promoted to deputy regional representative at the same office.
Do we have, please join me on stage.
Third, doctor Jihad Farah.
Doctor Farah is a strategic planning and governance expert at UNDP, Saudi Arabia, and university professor in Urban Planning at Lebanese University.
In the last 20 years, he has worked in consultancy, academia, think tanks, and international organizations in the Middle East and Europe.
His work and research focuses on issues of local governance, strategic planning, and urban infrastructure, socio technical arrangements in the context of fragility and rapid change.
That's just a snippet of his bio, please join me on stage.
He's here.
And welcome.
And last but certainly not least, miss Lamia Oh, Sarge Rochny.
Did I get that right? Oh, it's okay.
Okay.
La me, if I may call you, you know, so currently holds the position of regional inspector of urban planning, architecture, and territorial development for the Rabbit Saleh Kanitra region in Morocco.
Her professional background includes strategic responsibilities in diverse fields such as urban planning, territorial development, innovation, and digital transformation of territories, the implementation of urban monitoring tools, and the preservation of architectural heritage.
In parallel, she contributes to the academic projects as a part time lecturer and drew member in the National School of Architecture and Agronomic and Veterinary Institute in Rabat.
Let's move A, very important point.
Our last speaker is going to speak in French.
If you do not speak French, I encourage you at the back, we have a team who will assist you with a translation device.
All the other speakers will be in English, but our last speaker is going to be speaking in French.
If you don't understand French, get your translation devices.
Let me go to our erudite speakers.
My first question goes to miss Kane.
Syria's cities are navigating extremely complex challenges linked to recovery, infrastructure, pressures, climate vulnerability, and service delivery.
From your perspective, what are some of the main priorities emerging today around urban resilience in Syria? Could you share a few concrete examples of approaches or actions that are helping strengthen resilience and recovery in the local level or at the local level.
Over to you.
Wonderful.
Thank you, Ron.
Yes, I can present from here.
Wonderful.
Thank you, dear.
Thank you, everyone.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
The short answer to your question is that Syria is facing a range of complex challenges, but also opportunities.
Syious cities and housing really are at the center of Syria's recovery and at the same time are exposed to significant climate and environmental threats.
A UN Habitat Syria, our approach is really to focus on what we can do to support the housing and urban sector of Syria to recover by integrating climate resilience at the early stage.
I will share with you today some examples across three scales, including a project that we've implemented together with colleagues at UNDP, and thank you, Randald and Aya, for the invitation, as well as together with FAO.
But let me start by setting very rapidly the scene of Syria's context.
As I mentioned that Syria is facing one of the most significant housing damage crisis of modern history.
Over almost a third of Syria's housing stock is entirely destroyed.
Over the $216 billion estimated by the World Bank for Reconstruction, $80 billion of that alone is for the housing sector.
Before the war, about 70% of Syrians lived in cities, an estimated 40% of those in informal areas with insecure land tenure.
We know that as Syrians return to the country, the majority of these are returning to urban areas.
The challenge there is that urban areas are also facing not just severe levels of destruction, but also compounding environmental, climate, and social risks.
You see on the screen some of the challenges, water scarcity, drought, land degradation, pollution, waste, urban heat stress, just to name a few.
But what I want to emphasize today or highlight really is the compounding scale of these challenges with high levels of return, overcrowding, mismanaged land use, and the social cohesion challenges that this is bringing, as well as the health challenges and risks this is bringing are really significant and require action quite rapidly.
So let me talk you through three scales of what we advocate for to address these challenges.
Just very briefly, some images to send to you in terms of the scale of damage and conditions that we are grappling with.
But also to emphasize or highlight some of the potential assets.
I think too often when we're talking about recovery, we focus only on the challenges rather than highlighting the assets or the entry points that can be leveraged for recovery.
I appreciated what you said earlier, Ronald, that resilience is so much more than just through a climate lens.
Here you see on the screen, a very small image that you cannot read highlight a graph diagram that highlights the blue, the light blue is the scale of damage of residential structures in historic urban centers.
So that highlights that in most Syrian cities, the scale of damage that is highest is in residential buildings.
But more positively, what the images also highlight is that in historic urban centers where damage is often high, you also find incredible assets, whether these are heritage assets or sources of pride, traditional architecture, such as in the center in image of rural Damascus, but also in the other image, the water assets and the heritage assets of cities like Homes.
So how do we address this? At UN Habitat Syria, we advocate for an approach that integrates all aspects of urban recovery, including housing, urban governance, community engagement, heritage, economy, infrastructure, and environment.
A key approach through which we use for this is the Urban recovery planning approach or the city profiling, which is area based.
It brings together climate adaption and resilience with partnerships with other UN agencies, with community and government, always through a participatory approach, and always operating at multiple scales and integrating conflict sensitivity.
I'll talk you through very rapidly three examples of this.
Subnational level, one approach that I think is increasingly relevant as we start to talk about how we support Syria's not just climate response, but also its broader recovery is really looking at identifying priority corridors.
This is a subnational corridor of the M five, which stretches from northern Syria all the way down to the south, connecting the cities of Homs down to Damascus and then across the border.
Along this corridor, we start by really analyzing what are the features of the cities, what are the challenges that they're facing, but also what are the opportunities that they're facing.
And from there, we can draw out not just to identify what are the priority cities or areas where to support or concentrate our efforts, but also to draw out what are the pillars for enabling recovery at the subnational corridor level.
And often, as you see here, this really involves a strong focus or an element of climate and environmental challenges having to be centered.
I'll give very briefly one example here from Madea and Halfa two cities side by side along as part of the sub national corridor where we're focused.
Two cities that were very divided during the conflict.
But through the recovery planning and the city profiling approach, we zoom in, as you see here, identify challenges that both cities are facing.
Oh.
Also the opportunities.
Many of these centered on environmental assets and also what practical projects can be implemented that help to leverage the environmental assets, the cultural heritage assets, but also strengthen resilience.
And here is just some rapid examples of the types of priority projects that we identify and then support to implement.
Really, I want to emphasize on that example, the importance being that what these projects can contribute is not just addressing environmental risk or urban conditions, but fostering interconnection between two cities that were otherwise divided.
Very rapidly going down into the city level, on the former front lines in Idlib approach integrates damage assessments, working with the syndicative engineers and community to develop an understanding of the scale of damage across the city, and then also going into developing participatory urban recovery priorities.
Again, here centered on these heritage and environmental assets, and then down to the subnet city level at the neighborhood level, identifying priority projects that integrate and leverage these environmental and heritage assets.
Very briefly last example I want to highlight is our adaptation fund project that we implemented together with UNDP and FAO colleagues here.
And this builds on really a similar approach of where we talk about where we leverage this recovery planning approach and tool of human habitat, but took it to the next level to integrate climate data.
The project itself is focused on side, is focused on addressing urban water resource management issues and broader land management issues, and it takes an approach through working in four municipalities in rural Damascus, where water scarcity and infrastructure damage due to the conflict or compounding issues.
It's quite simple in its three pillars approach and it shows, I think, a really excellent way to leverage the partnerships or the added value of multiple agencies.
Inhabitat led on the vulnerability assessments, the recovery planning and the institutional capacity building while UNDP led on the infrastructure and FAO on the livelihood side.
Just very briefly to highlight, I know my time is up, but some examples of similar to what we do through the recovery planning approach more broadly, but really zooming into strengthening that to a more rigorous level of analysis to map out the land use and environmental degradation, and then also to look forward in future looking scenarios of climate change vulnerability assessments and to look at the projections for each area, analyzing your temperature trends and the sensitivity index so that we can identify and target priority locations.
Then finally, just to mention on the implementation of projects.
The projects are from all of the different projects I presented here.
Under the adaptation fund, we focused on decentralized wastewater management, for example.
But under some of the earlier examples, as I mentioned, we focus more on actual heritage or public space assets.
So in conclusion, our takeaway really or advocacy in Sera is that even in highly damaged and highly complex scenarios, leveraging the entry point of climate resilience and recovery, it's not just possible, but it's actually fundamental.
And we integrate this through a wider systems approach and through stronger partnerships.
We found that that's the key to deliver projects that are not just successful but are now being welcomed to be scaled.
So thank you very much.
Oh, thank you very much Felicity.
Just quickly, really, UNDP attaching itself to your approach, which we certainly applaud.
I think central to that is taking context specific approaches that are leveraging partnerships across the system.
It doesn't matter who delivers what, it's about leveraging what you bring best into that space to deliver the results.
I think that came out very strongly.
I love the ideas around the corridor recovery approach and the interconnected social, economic, and physical elements being addressed as you go.
And of course, a systems based approach.
My next question goes to Mr.
Ahmed.
Egypt has been advancing important work around urban development, coastal resilience, and climate adaptation, while also investing heavily in infrastructure and new urban communities.
From the government's perspective, what are some of the key priorities guiding Egypt's approach to urban resilience today? And could you share a few examples of concrete actions or initiatives that are helping the cities better prepare for future risks? Okay.
Thanks so much.
First of all, for the invitation to join this important discussion and session and also thanks for your excellent moderation for the dialogue as the discussion.
If you allow me to start with a small story.
When I started my career 20 years ago and that I remember 2005 and I first time heard about the word resilience, it was in the Egyptian context, it was just a very unclear concept.
I would say that this continued for some good years the last a couple of decades when the frequency of risks and it's not only about climate, but earthquakes, floods, heat stress, many of which are different health, like the COVID, social with regional conflicts and the displacements happening between the world, to be honest, positioned itself and featured itself as a strategic or as a very important aspects that we have to also be attention, able to handle and to get in a better situation when we are in a position to handle and to face such stresses and sources of risks as well as disasters.
I have been saying so with the attention mainly to clarify that when we are speaking about resilience, it's not just about climate in our region and specifically in a country like Egypt, We continue to face different formats of disasters and different sources of economic, social, environmental stresses also helps.
It's very important to see how we can handle and deal from the perspective of proper planning with with these different angles.
Another important point also that back to your question with regard to how Egypt from a government perspective, continue to advance knowing all that Egypt is a country that four years just living in 7% of its land size.
Define the other 93 plus of the cant size is facing heat stress, is facing all different format of the risks and many others.
Yet what's matter is where people are living.
So that's why cities are in the center of the discussion.
It's not about any place or whatsoever strategies that can cover 100% of the Egyptian land size.
It's again, where the people are living and giving that cities not only for the sake of cities or for the sake of urban communities, but again, for the sake of rural communities is in the center of the attack.
Again, what Egypt wanted to make and that was a journey of cooperation with the government of Egypt and UN habitat is its national version of the new urban agenda, the national urban policy reflecting on all matters of risk factors.
Disasters in its planning.
The process of design of this policy went into what we name it the balanced system of systems, which included not only Bilers related to climate, to biodiversity, but also to the economic, social, and the competitiveness of the city as well as the demographics.
So again, it went from just a limited urban built environment, urban built lens into a wider lens that can tackle all sources of risk, which would help us to mitigate and to plan properly to fix.
So again, that was reflected in a profile for for the different cities of Egypt.
In Egypt, we have more than 290 cities of different locations, aspects, some of which are close to the Mediterranean, some of which are more of a desert nature, some of which are close to the Red Sea.
Again, here are many, many differences from all angles, economic, social, and environmental.
Through that thorough analysis, each of these cities is having its profile and that profile has been designed in a way that shapes its future investment plans.
A very important next step that was built on that policy is the integration of the climate and all matters related to risk mitigation into the strategic blends of the cities.
In Egypt, by law, each city has to have its own strategic plan.
By the time all of them already existing, but they have to be updated each five years.
There is a journey of updating the strategic plans of the cities at the moment and building on the strategic partnership between the government and the UN system.
The strategic plans, and this is a work that is involving both UN habitat and U NDB with the General Authority for Physical Planning.
The strategic plans of the cities are being designed to tackle in a very rich perspective matters of infrastructure and how to get climate resilient and social resilient and so on.
I would compliment my answer to you with some examples and maybe for the time sake, I will focus on a city like Damieta.
As you all know, Damietta is If we would speak about climate resilience, Dame is reflecting a very big case, especially that it's a city where the Nile ends its journey with the Mediterranean.
So it's the most exposed by all reports and expectation to the seawater rise and the different environmental phenomenon.
And How we have been responding to it, I would say there was a lot of intervention made by the different UN agencies in that frame all shaped under the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation framework signed between the UN and the government of Egypt.
Very few reflection of which I may start with something related to the water sector.
We have a very typical village of around 5,000 plus inhabitants and by all means, just located next to one of the largest natural lakes started to feature a huge speed of displacement, citizens that used to be all working in the fishing sector, leaving that village.
Why they are living it? Because the fishing, which is their main craft and main professional career is not anymore of economic and environmental sustainability.
They are fishing from a lake that is full of floods coming from their village, which unfortunately is lacking the absence or lacking the proper existence of wastewater treatment.
So it is contaminated, going to the lake and then that fish are being cultivated.
So the ten that they are not even eating the fish that they are fishing.
We have through a smart intervention of introducing innovative solution for water and sanitation, we established their medium size wastewater treatment unit, a remote unit that shouldn't be connected with large wastewater treatment unit.
I would say that sim sewage or wastewater treatment unit returned life to that village.
We have another example.
Our colleagues from UNDB is working under one of the multi resilience program, again, how to help Damieta city in getting in a better position facing water risks and stresses related to heat stress.
There are also another interesting example still in Damiea and and how infrastructure and how the city can handle a very sudden situation after the conflicts that happened in the region, especially speaking about Sudanese and Syrians, it was noted that Dameta city tended to be the largest third city in Egypt hosting refugees.
So imagine all of a sudden in just less than one year, a city get to host additional 1,000 registered UNSCR refugees.
That means pressure on housing, pressure on educational educational health services in addition to proper need to access to public spaces, to local economic opportunities, water, sanitation, energy, and manual.
Again, through one of our interventions, which meant to integrate urban planning infrastructure in the migration context, we supported that city with the profiling of their first of all, the prioritization of an investment projects that can respond not only to the refugees needs, but also to the host communities and help in creating a good common language between the two groups.
We have been prioritizing these projects that can turn into real interventions and direct both the investments from the public and the private sector towards serving their communities.
Exams do exist.
Egypt is one of the largest countries in partnership with the UN agencies.
We have projects of green char Michie happening and green transformation for the whole city, including sectors of mobility, renewable energy, and wastewater treatment other agencies are working in Hegada.
We have one of our projects in Dab with support with the main aim of how to make a huge sustainable transformation in Da city.
I would stop here again and thank you for the question.
Thank you very much.
Certainly wonderful to hear the reflection of the systems of systems.
I've framed a couple of things that I took away from you, not necessarily in the language you provided it, but I think in the spirit.
I think one of the big challenges.
You talked about resilience and your own personal story to it.
What it prompted me to take away is that we need to really manage this global marketplace of jargons and really boil down a lot of these complex concepts so that we can get to its basic understanding and we can have more people opting onto the journey to really achieve those particular objectives.
I think that's a very, very important thing if we're going to really deliver at scale, more people have to understand where we're going.
Um, um, you know, seeing the city in its entirety and connect all the key actors that are critical to ensure the sustainability of the city's form and function was certainly something that came out of your examples and how you sought to deal with these issues, and you pointed to Dameta, which is one of our cities in our resilient urban futures approach.
So thank you for bringing that out.
It really highlighted the sort of multi pronged and systems based approach.
I want to now turn to doctor Farah.
For you, sir, the question is, Saudi Arabia has been undergoing major urban transformation processes and UNDP has had the pleasure of supporting the Spatial Planning Reform Program together with the national partners.
From your perspective, what are some of the key approaches Saudi Arabia is taking today on urban resilience and how is the spatial Planning Reform Program helping integrate resilience into the planning and governance systems? Your 10 minutes, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you for the invitation.
Yeah.
Regarding Saudi Arabia, when Aya came to me with a proposal of being part of this panel and talking about Saudi Arabia from the angle of urban resilience, basically, I thought about three main angles in which Saudi Arabia could bring something to the conversation regarding urban resilience.
The first one relates to the historic evolution of Saudi Arabia and what we could call the various, um, resilience regimes that Saudi Arabia has known in the last 70 years.
They are radically different.
They represent different conceptualization of how to live within an environment, how to build cities.
I will engage rapidly through this idea.
Then I will move to few urban practices.
Saudi Arabia is a rich laboratory in the last years of urban and special planning experiences, and I will be looking at them from the angle of urban resilience.
Third I'll be introducing our project that we are leading as UNDP with the habitat with the Ministry of municipalities and housing in Saudi Arabia that I frame under the title of Institutional Intelligence.
Going quickly, I would say that Saudi Arabia has known three main radically different resilience regimes that frame different ways of thinking about the city, about how we build settlements, how we engage with the risks that have been mentioned earlier.
The most, uh, secular one, the ones that have been there for centuries, that is adaptive resilience in the face of scarcity.
Saudi Arabia is a big country.
It's mostly made of desert, though it has varied landscape, most of it is desert and one main limitation is water in Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabian cities and Saudi Arabian settlements have managed to live with this threshold for a very long time.
They have managed to live within oases, develop even agriculture within the system.
But this has been a major, let's say, threshold for the evolution of these settlements.
They have been able to deal with heat which is an extreme heat in the situation of Saudi Arabia through a specific urban form that is adapted to this environment and this condition.
Third, and it's also an important element to be able to move beyond just small villages and to be able to build cities, there was a form of diversification of the economy.
In the sense the caravans that have been moving all through Saudi Arabia, the idea of commerce has always been a centerpiece within this form of civilization that made it work for a very long, long time.
However, it's clear that this mode of living, these conditions, does not allow to build very large cities.
So when the Islamic empires and the Arab Empires grew, they didn't grow through cities within Saudi Arabia.
They grew in Damascus, in Baghdad, in Cairo, and Sanbul.
So there's a clear limitation there for how much you can go within this system.
Um Something happened that changed this game in the 50s and 60s in Saudi Arabia, which was oil.
Oil allowed a radical change and it put what we can call technical and financial buffer that allowed to break the main elements that I mentioned earlier, which were water and heat through desalination, through air conditioning, and it brought also the idea of being able to build large cities.
And now we have a few big cities in Saudi Arabia, at least when we're talking about Skate of 8 million people in Riyadh, it's a big city.
However, this model of development that brought a lot of growth, economic growth, it allowed to position Saudi Arabia at the international level as an important player also.
However, it had many systemic risks that were becoming more and more troublesome, especially, I'll mention the year 2015, some metrics because it's in response to these metrics that Vision 2030, one of the main driving force of Saudi Arabia now had to deal with.
R urbanization, however, came with also a lot of demand on water.
Increasing annual demand of 7% in water that translated also in demand on energy, 6% additional demand and energy.
60% of the water consumed by these cities in Saudi Arabia come from deseminated water.
Also, this urban form is not adapted to the environment of Saudi Arabia.
We've seen huge floods in 2009 and 2011 in Jeddah that were devastating.
More importantly, and this is also one should keep in mind, this, uh, technical and financial buffer was challenged in 2015 by the fall in the price of oil.
56% fall in the price of oil put all this model and show the fragility of this model, which led basically to the transformative resilience, we call it under revision 2030.
The main idea is first diversify the economy, which is something that has been very medtized in Saudi Arabia.
But two other important aspects that I want to stress here and give examples on.
First one is repairing the urban metabolism.
How we can readapt the energy system, use more renewable energy.
The target is 50% renewable energy in Saudi Arabia, which is a big challenge.
How we can rework all the different urban systems and urban infrastructure to be more efficient and greener ones.
But at the same time, and this is the one point I want to stress on, I We see in Saudi Arabia a lot of technical futuristic technologies.
But I would say, and when you read the documents, a lot of documents in Saudi Arabia, they talk about agnostic attitude to technology, and I will stress some examples here based on two things on one aspect which is dealing with urban heat.
And making public space more livable and the other one related to managing water.
Of course, I believe everybody in this room has heard of the line, which is the very futuristic project that was medtized and that tried to, let's say, put an image of the city that is a very controlled environment, and this was one of the projects that were there.
However, there's other things in Saudi Arabia that have been working and that are important to emphasize.
One important initiative that is massively changing the situation in Saudi cities is what's called andstal modon humanizing cities.
And this kind of initiative focused on existing neighborhoods.
It focuses on the public space, on shading the public space, on greening the public space, on building community space within neighborhoods.
In the case of Riadh alone, 90 different neighborhoods have known such type of intervention at the national level.
Project Joy brought 1,500 public space within cities, reorganized public spaces within cities to make them more livable, more attractive for the population.
So this is, let's say, a low key thing that's not very medized internationally, but is really making big change at this level and allowing people to be able to move in the public space in Saudi Arabia to be able to walk around.
Another aspect is there has been a push for large development projects also to integrate all these concerns related to a better livable space and managed gardens of space regarding heat.
One example here is a big project, a very medium ized one also in Jeddah, the new downtown, it got a lead platinum for communities, for sustainable communities.
It's a very large projects, millions of meters squared, but it was designed in a way to be walkable, even in the new types of projects.
If we take also the aspect related to water, we see also Again, this very different approaches to how we deal with these challenges.
On one hand, we're moving even more within desalinization, but we're betting on more developed technologies.
For example, the reverse Osmos technology that has been used now in Saudi Arabia is one of the most efficient in the world.
In the sense it has the least ratios.
Yes, 2 minutes if I can.
Yes, I'll wrap it up.
It has one of the most effective solutions in this sense.
But at the same time, if you take the case of addi Hanifa, which is very interesting case of a polluted w that was transformed through a natural based solution to a wonderful space as a park and it allowed to provide clean water within this space.
I want to just stress two things that Beyond the projects, the issue of urban resilience has been also discussed at the institutional level in Saudi Arabia.
One of the main challenges there is that, urban resilience could be understood in a very different way from different institutions.
From one hand, it is focused on disaster preparedness and how we deal with it.
On the other, it's focused on the urban form.
And others through infrastructure, water management, et cetera, and again, also through municipal finance sustainability.
These different angles have been addressed by different institutions in Saudi Arabia when talking about urban resilience.
What the project that we've been working on brings to the table, and this is why I labeled it institutional intelligence is try to go back to the systems the planning systems and the municipal systems behind what's been done in Saudi Arabia.
There's several initiatives that focus on how to improve the municipal systems and others, how to improve the planning system.
I won't get into the details of them, but I will mention how they bring interesting things to the table from the angle of resilience.
The first is the aspect of diversity.
I be it within the new Spatial Planning Act that's proposed in Saudi Arabia or be it through the national Urban policies, there's a variety of themes that are being put forward that touch on a wide number of issues.
Diversity is the first thing.
The second thing is also important flexibility and adaptability.
If we're proposing, for example, a certain model or if we're proposing a certain standards or procedures, how we can introduce this flexibility to adapt to different contexts within the country to rising issues.
Third important aspects is optionality.
Optionality in the sense that today we're living in a world of uncertainty, of mounting uncertainties, of mounting risks and disruptors, and maybe the attitude toward that is not to make, let's say radical choices, but keep ourselves able to go beyond mass dependency, maintain this capacity to have different options at different times, and finally, learning and experimentation that should be ingrained in all aspects.
I'll stop here.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It really does pain me to have to speed your presentations up because I think there's a lot of value there, but we are under time constraints.
So one quick takeaway, oil, allowing technical financial buffering.
But what you showed us was systemic dependencies can also lead to systemic failures and synchronous failures, and you've outlined Certainly some approaches to get away from those systemic dependencies through your resilience through diversification, and you outlined the three areas, concepts of neighborhood revitalization, institutionalized urban resilience, and institutionalized intelligence as resilience practice.
Very fascinating presentation.
I'd like to learn more.
I want to turn to Lamia.
I was going to try to practice my French, but I hope you can understand me in English.
If I try to do French, it will probably take too long.
From Morocco has been advancing a very interesting approach to urban resilience, linking territorial planning, governance, and local development.
From your perspective, what are some of the key priorities guiding Morocco's approach today? And if possible, could you share one or two concrete examples of actions or initiatives that are already making a difference underground.
Over to you.
Thank you very much.
First and foremost, I'd like to thank the organizers.
I'd like to thank the organizers for bringing us in to this panel, to this side event, which makes it possible for us to share our experience in Morocco when it comes to resilience.
And most notably the effort expended by the Kingdom of Morocco for the implementation of a resilient planning.
I'm taking the floor today in a very particular context.
Cross This year, there have been floods, recent floods that stock our country.
Water risks are now structural and systematic, especially in the context of the climate change on our planet.
A few years ago in 2023, there was an earthquake as well, and that reminds us starkly that risk management is no longer just a sectorial issue, it's a planning issue, a land planning issue that has to bring in different actors.
So just by its topography, geography, its climate and its location, and because of climate change, Morocco is exposed to a double risk, that is, droughts and extreme weather events such as the floods.
That beset our country these past few years.
So in the face of the intensification of those weather events and climate events, our responsibility, our shared responsibility now in Morocco consists in anticipating, preventing, and integrating resilience within the very heart of our land planning texts and land use policies.
And that is why we have chosen a resilience approach that is led by the Ministry for national and Planning, urban planning, habitat, and city policies, and that's what I would like to present today.
This approach is part of the Kingdom's guidelines and government's guidelines and is in line with our international commitments.
In Morocco, natural risk and disasters vulnerabilities depends on many factors.
So there's the geography, the hydrology, climate characteristics in the country.
We are a semi arid country with bouts of droughts and intense torrential rains as well.
And there are worsening and compounding factors, accelerated urbanization, the degradation of soils, watershed erosion, degradation of vegetation cover, and there's also the inadequate drainage infrastructure, especially in major cities.
And it's also the case in some other areas in rural areas.
Informal dwellings are a major problem as well.
This is all compounded by the fact that some areas are densely populated.
Many populations live in precariousness and in very weak infrastructure.
Morocco is also among the most exposed countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa region when it comes to climate risks.
In terms of human and material losses, damage is mounting year after year, and it's projected to multiply by five by 2050.
So today, the worsening of the vulnerability in Morocco because of climate change is an obligation by which we are bound.
We have to think about all those different constraints.
Here is the timeline.
We can observe that floodings are quite recurrent in Morocco.
Three earthquakes took place during the last century and this century, so 1960, 2004, and 2023 with major human losses and material losses as well.
The last disaster was in the winter of 2026 in Morocco.
Extraordinary rainfall struck Morocco.
And the conclusion that we can draw is that the tools that we have, mapping tools, mainly made it possible for us to limit the damage both human and material.
As regards the approach, Morocco took a national approach Morocco went from reactively managing risks, natural risks to a prevention and resilience heavy strategy.
We now involved several different actors in several different sectors.
And this process went through different steps, most notably capacity building and a financial and legal support.
The objective was to limit and to prevent the risks related to natural disasters.
A lot of progress has been made.
We've got a new water law, a new seismic regulation governing building and construction in risk prone areas with different zoning bylaws.
So to go back to the issue that we handled in our department, and and urban planning, that is the first tool in our toolbox.
And we have urbanization suitability maps.
That is a prevention and anticipation mechanism.
It serves as a guide and also a tool that preserves human life and infrastructure.
So this first layer takes into account many risks and is done in the context of many partnerships.
And we have a lot of collaboration on a local level with participatory mechanisms.
And these urbanization maps are agile.
They evolve, and they can be adapted according to how things change and how new constructions arise in order to protect dwellings, settlements, or cities.
So these CAU, these adaptation, these urban maps take into account four risks.
The first one is a landslides, stone and rockfalls, landslides in general.
The second one is earthquakes and seismic risks.
The third one is floodings, and the fourth risk taken into account is coastal erosion.
Those four risks are groups into one reference document for the territory, and that's layer number one of our urban planning.
Now, what's the output of that? We have a regulation that is agile and adaptable.
These maps made it possible for us to make a classification of different risks.
We have high risks, average risks, even very high risks.
And these regulations also make a distinction between all the rules relative to the new projects and also the protection and preservation steps regarding pre existing constructions and buildings.
And today, besides these urbanization maps, our planning takes into account urbanization, but we also have land planning and urban planning that protects certain zones in certain areas.
We have zoning for strategic reserves and special protection.
A big And to go along with planning with this planning, we have Regulation 2.0.
This regulation 2.0 is a supplement to the initial regulation, and it takes into account the increase of buildable land.
And this is mostly for projects that have to do with resilience of the territory, the permeability of the soil, the pervasiveness of the soil, and the management of rainwater.
To conclude today in Morocco, we're still aiming to cover the entirety of our territory, mostly human settlements, thanks to these urbanization maps.
Our ambition is to spread this initiative to the entirety of our territory.
We're up to 80% now, but it's projected to reach 100% soon.
Our aim is to adopt new approaches when it comes to resilience and sustainability, mostly to face the problem of flood prone cities, for example, with our approach of sponge cities.
We're also aiming to strengthen our adaptation capacity in order to have better planning, planning more in line with the risks and the predicaments of the different cities.
And today we're consolidating that government that is already in place.
This multi strategic choice for planning and organizing.
It's investing in citizens and in buildings and construction.
Thank you for your attention.
What a wonderful way to end the conversation.
Your quote at the end, I think was perfect framing.
Resilience is a choice for better planning and organizing.
Colleagues, we're out of time, but I want to offer at least one question, burning reflection to the audience if you have any.
Yes, please.
Microphone is coming.
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge with us.
I have a question to miss Felicity Kane because you worked on the case of Syria and it's very similar to the case of Lebanon where I'm from.
I'd like to know more about the participatory approach that you adopted in recovery, considering the sectarian political dynamics in the country.
Can you tell us a bit about these dynamics actually in this participatory group? The challenges when it comes to the diversity of these people.
Thank you very much for the question.
It's an important question because it's also the reality.
There is no way we can talk about climate resilience in Syria without talking about social resilience and without recognizing the social cohesion challenges that exist.
And that's why we really do advocate for this recovery planning approach, which I showed briefly on screen, with a focus on the data and the analysis, but at the center of it is really the, the how of working with community.
Thus far, since the fall of the Assad regime, our focus has been supporting municipalities to lead this recovery planning approach.
We see this is important for rebuilding trust in government and in local partners who are often on the front line, but also in enabling the dialogue or the conversation around what are the shared priorities of cities.
Um.
It's, of course, complex and challenging, but I think incredibly important.
Maybe the last thing to add on that is the reason I highlight environmental assets or heritage assets of these urban areas as being important entry points.
It's because in our experience, around which conversations can bridge divides, can help to build soft bridges, at least in that way.
In the 25 cities where we've undertaken recovery planning and most of which the workshops I've attended there are always debates, particularly land allocation, resources, land zoning, unequal distribution of services, those who return, those who've left.
But what I will say is in conclusion that it's really then when you actually develop projects out of that that integrate climate resilience and address basic needs, but really leverage these sources of pride, these heritage assets, whether it's integrated public spaces.
That is what I see as fundamental to really addressing overall resilience in Syrian cities.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I think we have to wrap it up, so I'm really sad I have to close it because it's such an interesting panel with so many good thoughts and ideas and grounded practice, but we have to close the show, unfortunately.
Let me first ask you to thank our first set of speakers and our second set of speakers.
Please give them a resounding round of applause.
Let me also thank you the participants and thank the supporting cast.
I often don't hear them thanked the supporting cast who did the translation and managed the PowerPoint presentations.
Thank you very much for your support and the team managing the room, and of course, Ia, for organizing this very important session with our colleagues at UN Habitat.
Before we go, can we have a group picture, please? Those who spoke earlier, can you come up onstage? We just want to have a final family photo for posterity.
Thank you.
And have a good rest of the World Urban Forum 13.