ICLEI Europe and the Global Resilient Cities Network Europe and the Middle East (GRCN) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) during the closing plenary of the European Urban Resilience Forum on 27 May.

The MoU was signed by Wolfgang Teubner, ICLEI’s Regional Director for Europe, and by Lina Liakou, GRCN’s Regional Managing Director. Their signatures represent a commitment to collaborate in supporting cities to build a more resilient and sustainable future.

“The key point [of the MoU] is the sharing of knowledge, building capacity in many ways, developing a valid and sustainable resilient strategy and to be prepared, positioning cities as hubs to create broad strategy to address the topic in a wide sense,” explained Wolfgang during the signing at the Forum. “We need cooperation. We will not be a closed shop, we will march together and we need to build alliances, partnership in order to move strongly on the [resilience] agenda and also, of course, to foster and ensure impact and influence across all levels.”

As cities across the world are engaged in recovery from the health and economic crisis brought by the coronavirus pandemic, organisations will have to join forces to enhance knowledge and share information. Facilitating bilateral cooperation will help position cities as resilience hubs, enable knowledge sharing, support their organisation of events and workshops, and promote networking and partnerships to build stronger, smarter and more sustainable cities.

The collaboration is supported by Chief Resilience Officers across the region, including Arnoud Molenaar from ICLEI Member Rotterdam (the Netherlands), as well as Piero Pelizzaro of Milan (Italy), Lenio Myrivili from Athens (Greece), Michalis Koupkas of Thessaloniki (Greece), and Ana Ardelean from Tbilisi (Georgia).

For more information on the Forum that brought these organisation together, click here.