Grassroots women call for ecological and resilient cities: Integrating the localization of the New Urban Agenda and the Sendai Framework for DRR

The New Urban Agenda commits to achieve “E nvironmentally Sustainable and Resilient Urban Development” while fostering sustainable economic development and all persons’ well-being and quality of life, through environmentally sound urban and territorial planning, disaster risk reduction management, infrastructure, and basic services. This will be possible with a holistic vision that takes into account the social, spatial, economic and ecological aspects of building resilience to climate and disaster threats. For grassroots women living in areas vulnerable to climate change and disasters this is of utmost importance, since communities living in poverty bear an unproportioned weight of the risks and women are more affected by these risks, given their unequal access to assets and knowledge that are key for mitigating them and building resilience. This Networking E vent will present the continuous efforts of grassroots women’s groups and civil society organizations in partnership with government and institutional actors to effectively lead the localization of global policy frameworks, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; showcasing a clear example of how to localize global policy processes that is gender-responsive, inclusive and participatory, where local communities are not the object of development programs and projects but the main agents resilience building from the local to the global level. In this manner the panelist will: i) analyze successful experiences of localizing global policy frameworks (i.e. Sendai Framework) that are led by grassroots women and communities in partnership with other local and national level actors; ii) showcase women and community-led practices that exemplify how to effectively localize and promote resilient and sustainable urban development; and iii) foster the commitment of institutional actors to form mutually beneficial partnerships with organized groups of grassroots women and communities in the implementation of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.