For that purpose, we organized an information & consultation day on 7 May 2021, starting with an online event especially designed for our member cities.

23 cities from 8 countries took part; some of them we have worked with for a long time, but we were especially happy to see many new faces among the participants. After informing about the process and steps, we presented the outcomes of our thematic working groups phase, that was carried out during winter 2020/21 and included already many member cities, bringing their content expertise to topics like water, energy, climate change, SDGs, biodiversity, mobility or circular economy.

After a lot of input for the participants it was time for the interactive session. In small facilitated groups we collected feedback on the programme draft, the topics and ideas. We also discussed new ways of cooperation and wishes from member cities on how to become more active in the UBC network. We received a lot of ideas and input that is currently analyzed and integrated in the 2nd draft version for the text.

In the afternoon, we facilitated a consultation event with the other UBC commissions to discuss how we can better cooperate around the topic of sustainability within UBC in general. Sustainable development is one of the core values of the UBC network since its founding in 1991 and all commissions are taking it into account in their activities. Now we need to rethink the existing approaches and come up with new ideas to better use our synergies.