 Next week, IID and many of our partners are going to be at the Habitat 3 conference in Quito in Ecuador. This is the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development. It's an important conference for at least three reasons. Firstly, it's a very important opportunity to focus the world's attention on cities and urban areas. We're very aware that half of the world's population now lives in urban areas, yet towns and cities are often not fully recognised in global policy. Secondly, it's important because it's going to see the launch of the new urban agenda, which is a global policy document that's intended to guide urban policy and practice for the next 20 years. This fits alongside a lot of other important development agreements over the last year or so. The Agreement on Financing for Sustainable Development, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Declaration on Climate Change. The new urban agenda provides an opportunity to localise some of these important development goals in towns and cities around the world. Thirdly, it's going to be a huge gathering of researchers and practitioners from cities around the world. It's going to be a great opportunity for networking, for developing new ideas, and for strategising about how to address some of these urban challenges in the coming years. As a conference and as an agreement, there are some real exciting opportunities, but also some challenges that remain. The first challenge is that while the text for the new urban agenda is very strong on what needs to be done, it's much less strong on how this can be done and the role that can be played by different actors in achieving sustainable urban development as a contribution to global sustainable development. A second challenge is that although many local governments are going to be present at the discussions in Quito, the agreements are actually made by national governments, and we're wanting to see a stronger role for local and municipal authorities in these global development challenges. We want to see that recognised through the discussions next week. A third challenge is around the role for local civil society, because of course municipal governments have an important role to play, but they need to be held accountable by active civil society, and they also need to work in partnership with local civil society groups who have the legitimacy and who have the skills and the knowledge and to deal with many of the important local development challenges. So if you're watching this and are going to be in Quito at the conference, do come by the IIED store, do come to the events which we have listed on our website. If you're not going to be there, we'll be providing updates throughout the week and afterwards on our take on how the proceedings are going.