The Malmö Commitment calls on cities to do more about the social side of green transition

The partnership initiative was launched during the ICLEI World Congress Summit

The ICLEI World Congress 2021-2022 is officially over and one of its most impactful results was the creation of the Malmö Commitment – a global initiative which seeks to put people’s needs and social equity at the heart of the environmental transition efforts. It already counts with 8 member cities, or the so-called Early Adopters, but the partnership has the goal of inspiring more local governments to sign up.

Environmental justice for all

The Malmö Commitment positions local and regional governments at the centre of the global response to today’s challenges, by encouraging sustainable approaches, innovation, adaptability, participation, and inclusiveness in policy-making to tackle the current climate emergency. The understanding is that all of these need to be designed through the prism of social justice and equality in order to be effective.

The initiative gathers local and regional governments that commit to this urban transformation following a four-step process: identify the challenges; monitor social equity indicators; report the progress, and enhance the effort taken through neighbouring communities.

The Early Adopters are the cities of Malmö (Sweden), Glasgow (UK), Utrecht (Netherlands), Porto Alegre (Brazil), Manizales (Colombia), Santa Fe (Argentina), Austin (USA) and the State of Yucatan (Mexico). These cities are ready to share know-how and good practices both with supporting cities and new Adopters.

The Malmö Commitment has extended a call to local and regional governments that are mindful of the social aspects of the green transitions to join the initiative. They can express their direct interest by clicking on this link or by sending an email to: malmo.commitment@iclei.org. Joining the Commitment is free of charge but does require some administrative staff capacity.

The benefit for the cities and regions will be the opportunities to showcase their social engagement side to the global audience. Likewise, they will gain valuable access to tools, resources and good practices in the sphere of equitable local sustainable development planning and implementation.

There will be two progress reports with deadlines set for 2025 and 2030.