 Great. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Hope you guys had a good lunch So I'm my name is Andre Confiado I'm working for the UN environment program and I'm here to give you some insights from the Work that we did under the global initiative for resource-efficient cities and base and Aristide Kindly invited us to give this presentation on learning from different contexts. So I Have to say that I'm bringing on a little bit of a different context here and Providing a couple of examples from From two case studies that we did. So yeah, I'm just a quick slide on why the UN environment Program is working on cities. Obviously once again, as everyone said I don't think I need to explain that in this context and So the initiative that I thought that we worked on is the global initiative for resource-efficient cities so it's It's a platform of collaboration and the idea was to implement the urban metabolism at city level This stems from the report of the international resource panel on city level decoupling and the follow-up report on it on the weight of cities where We it was the the the international resource panel was advocating for the use of urban metabolism at the city level and So the global initiative for resource-efficient cities is So in a way, it's a networking platform as well for different professionals and academics like Iris T. We're working on Urban metabolism and at the same time we Curated some knowledge products one of the reports that was cited earlier on Urban metabolism and at the same time we also did some small pilot projects and seeing how we could implement this Especially in some developing country cities So these are some of the pilot projects that formed like the cornerstone of the GREC approach and We engaged directly with the different cities and it wasn't these cities were some of the gaps that we identified so we worked in eight of these cities and The two cities that I'm going to present are the ones in Recife, Brazil and the one on what's over there and source of gone city in the Philippines the goal of these Pilot projects was to provide practical assistance with some research analysis and policy tools that would enable decision-making in action So just a quick summary of the intervention cycle that we did so First we did some identification of the problems with some initial discussions with With the countries in the cities Engaging the different relevant stakeholders As well as the community leaders and community-based organizations gathering data and so forth recommending some approaches and validating and then It's a continuous cycle of revision and depending on on the outcomes and how do we How cities would consider implementing these these recommendations? so the this this intervention cycle actually allowed for Investigation of both vertical and horizontal integration so we also discussed the law with national level stakeholders for example in the Philippines and Also with the different sectors from from the waste management Companies the water providers etc To ensure that the solutions that we're trying to recommend are practical and useful for the city and the country and context-specific and at the same time building capacity in places where the Capacity is not necessarily there in terms of resources or in terms of in terms of people and Of course, I'm trying to make sure that the the entire process is participatory as well So the the first study is Excuse me. The first case study we have is a receipt in Brazil and how we we did some analyses that would help them in the formulation Like the continuous formulation of what they call the rec 500 or the their 100 year plan It's there's something happening there So it's called the 100 year plan because when they started When they started thinking about it There the the city was going to well it was they were planning to celebrate the 500th Foundation anniversary of for the city in 2037 So it started embarking on this ambitious plan 100 year plan for the cities for the sustainable growth of the city in the next 100 years and so it's this plan is meant to be a living document as you can see it's continuously being updated and They want the city that the city of Recife wanted to make sure that The structures and the and the work that they were doing and the proper management of the structures will result in a more effective and Efficient flow of all city resources After working with them and seeing Seeing their plan one of the things that we noticed is that they did not have an explicit Target and a more rational use of resources, so they were It's it was pretty important in a city that had a significant inequality in terms of the delivery of basic services It's actually quite 83% Only 83% had access to water, but only 36.4% had access to sewage collection a Lot of the data that was available in Recife even though they had a small data portal a lot of it was at the aggregate level and We needed to try to figure out how to get a more granular level of data and so one of my colleagues at UNEP developed a sort of simple transition scenario Tool that he called the spatial micro simulation urban metabolism model It has a terrible acronym called SMUM So if anyone has can figure out a better acronym for it where all years would we'd love to get a better acronym for it? and so the idea was to To simulate Interventions so policy interventions on the delivery delivery of electricity and water So these interventions are supposed to capture not only built infrastructure for basic service delivery But also different policies that we could put into place to regulate electricity and water use and delivery by the city So just say okay. Maybe perhaps you would like to reduce We want to aim to reduce electricity used by 20% in this in the city What would that look like and so the the model created a synthetic population to represent the actual population and and also looked at the current consumption of water and electricity in In terms of the type of home construction in in the city So either it was either in apartments or detached houses so individual houses and this was actually quite relevant in the end because a lot of the people living in in receiver were living in detached houses, so they would The density the number of people per house was actually pretty low and so through this Simulation program this basic simulation program that we did This is what we came out with the blue is the the business's usual baseline scenario and the orange one is the The transition scenario showing very minimal intervention but the the orange the orange line did not include any resource efficiency measures and So this was actually one of the main conclusions that that were that were seen during the during this very Small study is that there is a large increase in that would still be required in resources because of the expected population growth and that the city would have to input some resource efficiency measures if they would be able to Respond to the delivery to the services that the the population is requires and so This was something that we put forward to the city because this was not initially included in their 100 year plan and so The aim of the study was to demonstrate the potential and necessity of resource efficiency measures and That's what we were trying to prove in in the in the scenarios that we that might that that were developed by UN environment program we we use some synthetic data as a stand-in for the raw data to provide numbers for the decision-making and We tried as much as possible to use data to that was downscaled actually to the city level and that would be available in most national level the national level data and Combined that with with the demographic data. That's how the since the simulations were done and so The idea was for to include these resource efficiency plans To the rec 500 so the the 100 year plan for the city and these these analysis would provide an opportunity to integrate These resource efficiency measures and at the same time have the marginalized households actually to be a little bit more visible I'm saying that because a lot of the There's a lot of inequality in the in the city of receive a in terms of access to services and people who are living in individual houses were actually getting more of the services and the others were not and This this allowed the city to have an initial snapshot of what was happening and in terms of resource consumption in the city and it actually allowed The city to start considering the the the flows of their resources and now they're looking specifically Also in terms of construction materials for the different for the this different construction that they're doing right now, so it was to be quite frank it was a lot of it was just To open their eyes to what to how The urban metabolism framework and how a resource flow analysis could actually help them in terms of their long-term planning and that was actually one of the One of the main conclusions and outcomes of this of this initial case study So now the second example is we're going into a different context here. It's a source of gone city in the Philippines so If you may have noticed on these two examples that I'm using are also secondary small secondary cities in In Brazil in the Philippines. I just looked at it really quickly Secondary city in Brazil is about 1.6 million people and This one for the Philippines. It's still relatively small. It's only a hundred and seventy thousand But it's defined what they call it it's defined as a second-class component city So the Philippines has this classification in terms of City income so it's not that it's like second-class in terms of you know These are priority cities, but it's it's it's it's ranked in terms of in terms of Local revenue so it's I put there as well that this is a partially urban city because A big chunk of it is actually farmland So in the Philippines the cities are subdivided into these local sub-local divisions called barangays So it's like a neighborhood, but that has an actual Structure with an elect like a small elected government For each barangay and so if you can see there only 18 of them are classified as urban and the other and and the rest are Classified as rural so it's a lot of it actually this within the administrative boundaries of the city it included a lot of farmland and One of the things that the city was actually trying to Tackle as their the threats to the quality of life of the citizens of the city due to the rapid urbanization that was happening So I don't have the specific numbers in terms of urban growth But these was one of these were one of the things that the city identified as one of their main issues So just a quick Show of what the methodology was done in terms of the in terms of the study and Through the different stakeholder consultations and the discussions with the government The local government I mean the the resources that the project concentrated on were both were water and food So initially we had we had also buildings and construction materials and energy and But we specifically concentrated on water and food because one the city identified a lot of water losses in terms of a Lot of water losses which was affecting the service delivery of the city to the to the inhabitants and at the same time Since it is a lot it is a lot of farmland a lot of food and specifically rice This is this is Asia after all so requires a lot of we eat a lot of rice and That also entails that it needs a lot of water and the two are very much linked together when we started doing the study and Just wanted to identify that initially the the city government thought that The water losses were due to informal settlers that were pilfering the water from the from the soup from the systems that the city was getting from their from their water sources which they called the the watersheds and So initially the city had identified these informal settlers as the reasons for the water losses just something to keep in mind and So I just wanted to show you these these two maps that we did so water usage in the city ranges from irrigation to to power a generation and it all even ends up to to tourism and aquaculture and Here on the left actually just wanted to show in terms these these were the These are the watersheds or the sources of water for this for the city and And and the sanki over there on the right is actually the the water flow estimations for one specific watershed Which is the tea called kawaiian, which is this blue one and this entire blue one provides 20% of the of the cities of the city's water and So it was through the through the study that was done and and the and the resource flow analysis that was done that in Which showed that actually the surface water that was taken from the from this from that specific sub watershed Almost all of it a big chunk of it actually goes initially from hydropower and then it goes into the irrigation systems but then actually a lot of it was was lost and So the study identified a major inefficiency in the irrigation system and so it's practically 19 a little over 19 million cubic meters from the from that watershed alone and This was something that was not initially identified by the city when they did when they started doing their analysis in terms of their water losses and as I said the other thing the other resource flow that we wanted to look at was the food and Because the city the vast majority of the city to over two-thirds of it is still agricultural land You can see they're all basically all of the green that's within the administrative territory of the city. Those are all the farmlands and Almost half of the the local half of the local production is just rice So it's a process and semi-process imported goods were the other half of the of the inputs for the city and so it the nexus between the water and the food here was pretty was pretty evident in terms of the rice production and And and then obviously in terms of post harvest processing the requirements for electricity and fuel energy Which is still related to the water needs of the city because the a lot of the electricity from the city is from hydroelectric power and so Thinking about it. We were I'm sorry. It's just a cheap water and food efficiency, but some of the policy recommendations and conclusions that stem from this example was The the cons the conservation apologies for the mistake there the conservation and rehabilitation of the sub watersheds the city the city had actually started Discussing with the national government on how they would be able to Facilitate the conservation of their sub watersheds. So they also started looking at their forest land use plan so that it would They would enable them to Also develop some natural areas for water Catchment Another thing is that they would have to start rethinking the farming calendar of the of the farmers in terms of when to harvest when to went to irrigate depending on on the on the seasons, so They they started also thinking about irrigation efficiency technologies and also water catchment areas for the rainy season Which is a consists which is half the year in the Philippines. So it starts from between May and about November October November and Also how to increase irrigation cover and reduce chemical fertilizers so coming stemming from those policy recommendations actually the Unfortunately, the the mayor that we were initially working with was not voted back into office the following year But these are some of the things that she put that the mayor put into place some of the policy recommendations that she put into place But we're actually that have started bearing fruit now in in the city of Sorca guns So one was the rehabilitation of the sub watersheds and the updating of the forest land use plan so the idea was to really Ensure that the the forest and the the forest were preserved in some of those areas which had the watersheds under them and they started negotiating with the National Irrigation Authority of the Philippines to start co-financing some water catchment areas for this specifically within and in the vicinity of that specific watershed and Alternatively, they they This is the iron like sort of quote-unquote irony from what I mentioned in the beginning is that the city is now planning to utilize the budget To the budget that would have gone to the water catchments to at least relocate some of the informal settlers and try to provide them with With some decent housing and at the same time which would allow them to to protect the watershed areas and co-finance some of the water catchment facilities and Lastly the the city is also trying to was strongly advocating the use of organic farming and provision of free seeds for the farmers so that That hand-in-hand with the with the rethinking of the calendar They would they were also trying to to bring back some natural processes into the farming in that city and Just just a quick just a quick note on what's next that's Something that stemmed from from all of these different case studies that we did in them in those eight cities that I showed on the map so one of the things that That stemmed obviously from it was the discussion in the narrative on circular economy at the city level and Something that we were looking at when we were doing some of the work with our seed here in Brussels is who was We had these circular economy plans but a lot of the the frame the indicator indicator frameworks that that we looked into that did not necessarily have Indicators to show how it would how it would affect the quality of life and in the well-being of individuals for during this circular economy transition, so a lot of the plans had the had the had Sentences or statements about improving the quality of life of individuals, but a lot of the a lot of the indicators that we will look That we're looking at obviously the economy Materials, but none of it was looking at well-being equality gender even and Just actually got us thinking and this this stemmed a lot of this stemmed from the work that we were doing and During the the the piloting of the GI rec program and obviously this makes also a lot of sense for developing countries in terms of How to continue developing or you know, should they should they even continue to grow or you know? One of the things that we mentioned earlier in terms of should to the city continue to grow or do we just go for a D-growth policy and So we were we started looking at that as well. And so we're what are we working on right now is that? So one of the things is how to ensure that marginal marginalized groups are not left invisible and one of the things that we we saw does that The jobs the number of jobs that are created created in a circular economy could possibly be sort of like an like an anchor indicator, but just a Just something that would show possibly that that the circular economy transition is actually benefiting marginalized groups so we're currently working on that with Iqli and circle economy and Marianas one of the people also working on that as well with us and Also bridging the data gap. So we're working on science-based solutions accessible to developing countries. So the downscaling of national level data Especially in developing countries was actually quite helpful We did it in Sorsogon City No, we did it in receive a and we're trying to we're still trying to develop this This methodology so the small method to ensure that we could continue using the these kinds of tools to develop the synthetic populations and develop simulations so that it would be used as a basis for the decision-making process and That's it