Ecovillages in partnership with UNITAR held a networking session 'Sustainable Cities and Villages' at the Second World Urban Forum Barcelona September 2004

"There can be no more important goal in an urbanizing world than to reach amicable solutions to urban problems brought about by accelerated change. By bringing together so many of the key actors in sustainable urban development, the World Urban Forum is moving us all toward this goal."    
Kofi Annan-  UN Secretary-General

The World Urban Forum was designed as an inclusive and dynamic forum to stimulate discussion and reflection on a wide range of issues concerning the worldwide rapid urbanization as one of the major challenges facing the international community. Networking events played a substantial role in generating the atmosphere of open discussion.

Sustainable Cities and Villages:

GEN in partnership with UNITAR's CIFAL Network held a networking session “Sustainable Cities and Villages”. Through a synergetic group dialogue process we looked at how to improve the service CIFAL Network - a network of International Training Centres-, is rendering to the international community, by training Local Authorities/Actors towards building Sustainable Cities and Villages. We explored how we can tailor training sessions to local context, balancing ambition and realism. We also looked how over the next years we would work in the context of the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, particilarly MDG 1, 6, 7 and 8. In this dialogue GEN, who has been involved in the design and delivery of ecovillage training sessions within CIFAL, presented the ecovillage model as a viable solution to eradication of poverty and degradation of the environment, while combining a supportive social-cultural environment with a low-impact lifestyle.

Group discussion at the Unitar/GEN training.
Photo: May East

...from the UN Habitat website:

Urban Sustainability:

Dialogue on Ecology, Economy and Society.
"Sustainable Urbanization" is a dynamic process that includes environmental, socio-economic and political-institutional dimensions. This dialogue looks at the challenges confronting local authorities and other partners in achieving social and environmental sustainability through better 'urban governance'. This includes assessing the effectiveness of tools such as social inclusion, decentralization, municipal empowerment and the mobilization of local resources through stakeholder cooperation. The aim is to encourage partnerships at every level: at the local level for social inclusion and better environmental governance; at the national level for up-scaling demonstration projects like Localising Agenda 21; finally, at the global level to support implementation

Useful links:

http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2004/default.asp
http://www.unitar.org