ASEAN-German Expert Forum on Creating Pathways for Urban Resilience – Chair’s Conclusions

Government officials, city representatives and selected experts from ASEAN member states and Germany met in Singapore in November 2018 to discuss opportunities for the ASEAN-Germany Development Partnership to jointly scale up action on building resilient cities. Participants agreed that more strategic and collaborative action will be needed to speed and scale up action across ASEAN member states. This includes linking the issue of urban development with disaster risk management and climate change adaptation by bringing the different thematic communities into closer dialogue.

Moreover, they identified several areas that will be key to creating an enabling environment for advancing ambitions on urban resilience, including legal frameworks, greater financial autonomy and partnerships across different levels of government and between different stakeholders. There was a strong call for continuing policy dialogue on the issue within ASEAN as well as between ASEAN and Germany. The Expert Forum was initiated and organised by the German Federal Foreign Office, adelphi and the ASEAN Secretariat, and co-hosted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources of the Philippines (DENR) and the National Environment Agency of Singapore (NEA).