The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is expanding its Sustainable Emerging Cities programme to eight more Caribbean countries (Trinidad and Tobago was a pilot country for the initiative), starting with Jamaica:
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will expand its Emerging Sustainable Cities Initiative to include at least one city in each of its 26 borrowing member countries. In addition, the Bank will enable donor governments, firms, and foundations to sponsor the participation of additional cities.
The announcement was made by IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno in the seminar “Emerging Sustainable Cities Initiative: From Diagnosis to Action,” which was held on Tuesday, March 20, in Montevideo, Uruguay. The event was co-sponsored by the Municipality of Montevideo.
The initiative was launched last year to support cities with populations between 100,000 and 2 million people that are growing much faster than the region’s mega-cities. The IDB estimates there are 140 of these emerging cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. The goal of the initiative is to form alliances with cities that wish to develop long-term strategies for sustainability in environmental, fiscal, and urban management, and to plan for the impacts of climate change.
The initiative’s pilot phase included Montevideo, Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago), Santa Ana (El Salvador), Trujillo (Peru), and Goiânia (Brazil). In each city, a team of sector experts from the IDB made a comprehensive and rigorous diagnosis and evaluated challengesthat affect sustainability. Later, city officials used these inputs to prioritize problems and design an Action Plan to solve them. The IDB is now helping the cities to prepare investment projects and obtain funding from international sources to support these plans.
In his keynote presentation at the seminar, Moreno described how the diagnostic and planning methodology was applied. He also provided examples of how the pilot cities are preparing to address such challenges as digital connectivity, public transportation, solid waste management, and the restoration of a historical center.
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In the coming months, Moreno said, the IDB will identify cities in Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Jamaica for inclusion in the initiative. More cities will continue to be added over the next five years.
The eligible Caribbean borrowing member countries are The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
Previous related posts on Green Antilles: IDB aiming for sustainable urbanization in the Caribbean and Latin America and Port of Spain chosen for a pilot project to set new standards for sustainable urbanization in the Caribbean.
Also, there’s more information at the IDB website about the Sustainable Emerging Cities Platform.
[Photo: Josh Hunter]
