By Ioana Popp
100 Resilient Cities is an innovative project, pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation, seeking to select and work with 100 member cities in order to help them confront the increasing number of shock and stresses that challenge an ever-more urbanized world.
The International Organization for Migration and the 100 Resilient Cities Initiative will jointly produce a planning guide and toolbox as guidance for well-managed urban migration. This will help local authorities across the world build or re-design more resilient cities that take into account the dynamics and diversity that migration brings, in both normal times and during crises. This tool will also serve as IOM's guidance to the work of the Habitat III policy units.
The reality
Migration is both a national and local issue. The number of migrants living in cities will almost double in the next decades. Implementation of sustainable planning measures must be widely supported by all governance structures - national and local governments.
The issue
Many city and local governments still do not include migrants in their city planning processes.
A common goal
People in resilient cities – the population, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city – live better in good times and are able to prevent, respond to and adapt more effectively to chronic stresses and acute shocks.
IOM’s vantage point
IOM works with states and partners to support well-governed migration systems. While migration policies tend to be implemented at the national level, local development plans should articulate the real needs of people, particularly the poor and marginalized. As a result, much of IOM’s expertise is acquired at the local level. The key strength of IOM’s expertise is its capacity to look at migration from a holistic and integrated way.
What IOM brings to the table:
A combination of two overall, inter-related and mutually supportive means:
- Direct assistance to migrants and communities. This is useful for urban planners since displacement and vulnerability data from assistance operations provide an overview of patterns/trends (predictive), as well as required adjustments for cost-effective and timely solutions (corrective function).
- Capacity building to local institutions to provide protection assistance to migrants. IOM builds governments’ capacity to protect migrants themselves in various ways, and promotes policy debates that create the political drive and resources for such capacity-building. These are both informed by and influence operations on the ground.
What 100 Resilient Cities bring to the table:
- Funding in the form of a grant to hire a Chief Resilience Officer;
- Technical support to develop a holistic resilience strategy that reflects each city’s distinct needs;
- Access to and/or in-kind services from platform partners to support strategy development and implementation. Platform partners come from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, and will offer tools in areas such as innovative finance, technology, infrastructure, land use, and community and social resilience;
- Membership in the 100 Resilient Cities network to share knowledge and practices with other member cities.
Next steps
IOM Missions in Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Namibia, South Africa (2 cities), Zambia, Nepal, Somalia plan to register for the challenge.
Applications open until November 24, 2015.
IOM and 100 Resilient Cities Initiative are currently working towards formalizing the partnership and will jointly plan to produce a planning guide and toolbox as guidance for well managed urban migration. This tool will help Chief Resilience Officers across the world build or re-design more resilient cities that take into account the dynamics and diversity that migration brings, in both normal times and during crises. This tool will also serve as IOM's guidance to the work of the Habitat III policy units.