Mayors to discuss sustainable development, climate change

Mayors from 39 cities from around the world will gather in Seoul later this week to discuss inclusive development and climate change.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, will be among the mayors to take part in two separate conferences in Seoul on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday’s conference, organized by the OECD, is on inclusive, sustainable cities. The other, on Friday organized by the Seoul government and International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, is on climate change.

Beside Hidalgo, the mayors of Tehran, Dallas, Hanoi and Jakarta, will be present to share their best practices of inclusive and sustainable city development and learn from each other.

“Seoul is the first Asian city to host the OECD’s inclusive development conference for mayors,” Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said in a statement. “I hope to share Seoul’s experience with other cities and learn from them.”

The inclusive development conference will end with the Seoul Implementation Agenda, with cities vowing to create and support policies toward sustainable development. The conference will also see two sideline discussions on topics such as gentrification, social enterprises, public procurement for inclusive development and women’s and children’s issues.

Hidalgo and Park are also expected to share their experiences in adapting to climate change at the climate change conference.

With the theme “Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy,” the conference will draft a collective statement. The mayors of Jakarta, Hanoi, and Pasig in the Philippines will launch the project, “Ambitious City Promises,” to introduce plans for emission reduction.

Seoul announced its own emis- sions reduction plan in April 2015, pledging to reduce greenhouse gases by 25 percent from the 2005 level by 2020 — in 2005, Seoul emitted 49.4 million tons of greenhouse gases. Seoul has laid out 160 detailed targets to cut that by one quarter, including increasing share of renewable energy in its power supply, promoting emission-free vehicles, expanding roof gardens and urban farms on top of buildings and auxiliary public lands, promoting solar panels for buildings and households and increasing building energy efficiency. Between 2015 and 2016, Seoul has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5 million tons.

Fighting air pollution is Seoul’s most recent priority related to climate change.

With heavy traffic regarded as the main culprit, the city is pushing people to drive vehicles that emit a smaller amount of pollutants or take public transportation. As early as later this year, public transportation will be free on days when the fine dust level is high.