A speech By Dr. Joan Clos, Undersecretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT

It is a decision both timely and fitting to set up Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation. In today’s world, over half of its population lives in cities, and therefore cities play a leading role in tackling the challenges that arise from globalization. It is of crucial importance to advance innovation and search for new development patterns, just as it is of great significance to share success experience and promote uninterrupted inter-city exchanges. For this reason, I feel very delighted to see the establishment of the Guangzhou Award under the auspices of United Cities and Local Governments and the World Association of Major Metropolises. Through the platform of the Guangzhou Award, winning cities can diffuse and transmit their experience in innovation to other cities in the world.

It is a universally-acknowledged fact that the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-HABITAT) has long been committed to encouraging innovation practices. Under its auspice, the famous Dubai International Award for Best Practices has come into being. It is my conviction that the Guangzhou Award will make the equally important contribution to inter-city exchange of experience. I am honored to be appointed chairman of the jury of the Guangzhou Award. Our work has been kicked start in full swing.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my congratulations to the fifteen nominated cities. What a tremendous achievement to be selected as one of the fifteen nominated cities. I am looking forward to leaning more about these fifteen innovative initiatives and foster deeper communication with these fifteen cities in the future.

It is known to us all that sixteen years has passed since the announcement of the Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlement and the Habitat Agenda. The Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlement and the Habitat Agenda released in 1996 cover a number of issues facing human settlement. More importantly, they successfully call on policy-makers and government leaders to revise and reform their national policies in the spirit of the declaration and the agenda.

What we need to do now is to renew the contents of the declaration and the agenda so that they can better adapt to the changing conditions in cities around the world.

Policy-makers and the media are increasingly aware of what has been achieved in urban development, which is a good indicator of the growing influence of cities in international affairs. Despite such undoubtedly positive changes, many people hold that cities constitute a challenge and obstacle to human development, blind to the potential and transformational power of urbanization.

Whichever region you are in, it has been testified that cities are the foundation for national, regional and even global development.

In this sense, now is the time to formulate a brand-new agenda on the sustainable development of cities.

UCLG and the Metropolis will play a crucial role in ensuring that opinions of all the cities can be fully expressed in the third human settlement assembly of the UN in 2016. I’m convinced that the experience and legacy of the first Guangzhou Award will be further extended.

In conclusion, please allow me to extend my heartfelt thanks to Guangzhou and its government officials for implementing this visionary initiative. I also would like to express my best wishes to the jury for taking up such an important task, and extend my best regards to my friends present in the conference.