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City and regional officials, policy makers, and UN staff came together at the ICLEI World Congress to celebrate the announcement of CLEVER CIties Malmö, Sweden as a Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) Resilience Hub. Malmö joins CLEVER Cities Milan in receiving this honour. MCR2030 member cities receive a 3-stage roadmap to urban resilience that includes knowledge sharing, monitoring, and reporting tools that support cities in reducing risk and building resilience. 

Malmö, 2021 most environmentally friendly Swedish city and host of the World Congress, is the second city in Sweden to earn the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) Resilience Hub designation. The honour recognizes the city’s intentional and proactive approach to the mitigation of current and expected climate-related environmental hazards. In recognizing Malmö as a new Resilience Hub, UNDRR lauded the city’s response to severe flooding in 2014 and the resulting coastal protection strategy. Also noteworthy is the city’s internal energy reduction target of 30% for city owned buildings. 

The announcement was followed by a panel of representatives from existing and potential hubs located in Europe as well as Southern and Central America. Isabel Roldau, Deputy Mayor of Recife Brazil, shared her municipality’s work developing a Local Climate Action Plan, community capacity building projects, and a suite of conservation and restoration work supporting climate adaptation.  

Susana Sousa Gonçalves, Head of Civil Protection Department and Margarida Bento Pinto, Head of Environmental Monitoring Division, from the City of Matosinhos, Portugal, elaborated on their city’s 14 years of experience in the resilience planning sector. Matosinhos has striven to raise awareness of environmental risks among local youth, and has invested in maximizing local technical capacity for effective emergency planning. A resilience hub applicant at the time of the World Congress, Matoshinhos has since been announced as Portugal’s first Resilience Hub. Matosinhos’ commitment to collaboration stood out during the panel and in their MCR2030 application: "Our focus is not only disaster risk management, but also climate change and sustainability. This is not possible if we work apart. " —Susana Sousa Gonçalves. 

Helena Monteiro, MCR2030 Secretariat/UNDRR, tied the session together by underscoring the role of hubs in facilitating peer to peer learning. Participation in MCR2030 is not only an accolade, but an opportunity to share local experiences developing holistic disaster risk reduction strategies that embed resilience into planning mechanisms. Resilient hubs also co-develop strategies for supporting other local governments in their journey towards resilient planning. 

What’s next for CLEVER CIties Malmö? Deputy Mayor Simon Chrisander hopes that the city’s new role will bring Baltic municipalities together in a coordinated effort to increase disaster resilience: "We need to say to our voters, it is good to invest in resilience." This commitment to resilience and community involvement is not limited to the environmental sphere, evidenced by the city’s participation in social resilience projects, such as CLEVER CIties.