Hamburg, 30 to 31 May 2016. Together with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the Service Agency Communities in One World organised a forum for Latin American and German mayors The event was also attended by stakeholders from the private sector and academics who are also involved in innovative and sustainable solutions for urbanisation and climate change at the urban level.
The forum provided a platform for sharing experiences between medium-sized municipalities in Germany, Latin America and the Caribbean, and was designed for municipal decision-makers. The total of 160 participants included high-ranking municipal delegates from 22 German municipalities, and 43 Latin American and Caribbean municipalities from 22 different countries.
Wolfgang Schmidt, State Councillor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Dr. Stefan Wilhelmy, Director of the Service Agency and Ellis J. Juan, Division Chief of the Housing and Urban Development Unit at the IDB, opened the conference. Professor Elke Pahl-Weber, Managing Director of the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning at the Technical University of Berlin, then delivered a presentation on the urbanisation processes in Germany. This was followed by a presentation on the urbanisation processes in Latin America and the Caribbean, delivered by Horacio Terraza, Sector Coordinator, Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI), IDB. Three Latin American mayors them presented their action plans to tackle urbanisation – a key task, given that more than 50 per cent of the global population currently live in urban zones. The questions arising from that, particularly in the fields of energy production and renewable energy, mobility and solid waste management, were discussed in the panel debates that followed.
Day one of the conference ended with a ceremonial senate reception at Hamburg Town Hall. Here the First Mayor of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, the President of the IDB, Luis Alberto Moreno, and the Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Hans-Joachim Fuchtel, held keynote speeches.
