Global River Cities for Sustainable Urban Development

The world’s Great Rivers have enabled the growth of cities. From Cairo on The Nile, Vienna on the Danube, and Ho Chi Min City on the Mekong, to Shanghai and the Yangtse, New Orleans and the Mississippi, and Manaus on the Amazon, great rivers have connected human settlements to water, food, trade, culture, capital, and innovation. In ancient times, rivers provided the best locations for humans to settle and served as the initial means of connectivity and livability, enabling the establishment of towns, settlements, and cities. Nowadays, rivers are the life force that can make our cities sustainable. However, rapid urbanization along riversides, if not managed sustainably, can threaten ecosystems, biodiversity, and overall environmental health. Also, due to their intrinsic ties with nature, human settlements on rivers are particularly vulnerable to climate change, facing strong environmental and socioeconomic consequences of natural disasters, floods, wildfires, and droughts, which exacerbate issues such as food and water security, as well as air quality. This session gathers key global leaders from river basin cities across the world to advocate for the importance of collaboration to address development, sustainability, and resilience challenges on rivers.

Cities can make a significant positive change and tackle the challenges related to development, urbanization, environment, and climate change. By reestablishing their connection with rivers and nature from a collaborative perspective, some river-led networks are already making strides in reducing river pollution, fostering economic complementarity throughout urban centers, facilitating trade, improving climate resilience, and advocating for city leadership in national and regional strategies and policies. This session brings to the discussion the networks of the Amazon basin, Mekong Rover basin, Yantzee River Delta, Danube and Nile groupings. Some river networks are promoting synergies among local approaches through better coordination and exchange, others are involved in joint monitoring and action plans. How can urbanized rivers drive sustainability and resilience in 21st Century settlement as population grows and the planet gets hotter?

Session Topics
1. Importance of formal and informal networks of cities that share the same river river to address development, urbanization, environmental, and climate challenges.
2. Collaboration focuses, including river pollution reduction, biodiversity protection, sustainable river tourism, unification of regulation to enable seamless navigation, port development, new market creation, trade improvements and facilitations, economic complementarity, and value chain integration.
3. Collaborative Governance and challenges for regional institution-building and formalization, intercity collaboration, and coordination on specific issues.