Union of the Baltic Cities Sustainable Cities Commission has partnered up with the Urban Future Global Conference and was represented at the Green Business Village stand during the latest conference in Oslo, Norway from 22 – 24 May 2019. UBC Sustainable Cities Commission was represented by project coordinator Juha Pulmuranta and project planner Kristiina Paju.

The Urban Future Global Conference is Europe’s largest event for sustainable cities and it is also a place where to meet the most passionate and inspiring CityChangers from all over the world. For us, it represented a great opportunity for networking and meeting with other city networks and actors in the field of sustainable urban development.

A stand at the Green Business Village

UBC SCC had a shared stand with the CIVITAS ECCENTRIC project supported with opportunities to learn more about our Commission, the UBC city network in general and the projects that we work with.

The following projects were presented at the Urban Future Global Conference 2019:

• BSR Water
• IWAMA
• Baltic Smart Water Hub
• Baltic Urban Lab
• Cities.multimodal
• HUPMOBILE
• CIVITAS ECCENTRIC
• CIVITAS SUMPs-Up
• Energy Wise Cities
• CASCADE

During the conference, UBC SCC met up with colleagues from multiple member cities, collaborating partners from other city networks and actors like Covenant of Mayors, EUROCITIES, European Green Capital and ICLEI.

Connecting City of Turku with CDP

During the conference, City of Turku’s Chief of City Planning Timo Hintsanen met up at our stand with CDP representative Pandora Batra to discuss briefly on the role of CDP disclosure and benchmarking for City of Turku’s aim of becoming carbon neutral by 2029. Ms. Batra highlighted the importance of collaboration in environmental benchmarking and the opportunity to start disclosing to the CDP Cities Questionnaire 2019 – smaller cities can also disclose and get the benefits of shared good practices and information on where they are standing on the global scale.

Both Ms. Batra and Mr. Hintsanen encourage UBC cities to step up their climate action and start disclosing to CDP to become more resilient in the face of climate change and the accompanying challenges that will impact our communities. You cannot manage what you do not measure!

The next Urban Future Global Conference will be taking place in Lisbon, Portugal in 2020. More information: www.urban-future.org

Written by: Kristiina Paju