Sustainable cities must be in the crosshairs of the World Bank and IMF

Making cities sustainable is a vital ingredient in meeting the goals of reducing harmful emissions and lowering temperatures that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have put into their missions. But will that receive the coverage and focus it needs at the multilateral financial institutions annual meetings in Morocco in October?

More than half of humanity lives in cities and, by the year 2050, two-thirds of us — 6.5 billion people — will be urban creatures. Unless international, national, regional and local policymakers drive change in the way we manage our conurbations, achieving sustainable development will be an uphill battle.

Climate change will be front and centre when the ministers and central bankers from the 190 members of the World Bank and IMF gather for their annual meetings in Marrakech between 9 and 14 October, but through their different lenses. For the Bank, climate change is an impediment to its goal of ending poverty, while for the Fund it makes it harder for poor, countries to run a robust economy.

The incoming World Bank president Ajay Banga has forged a new slogan for the bank — a world free of poverty on a liveable planet. His counterpart at the IMF Kristalina Georgieva has described climate change as macro-critical and identified for financial instruments such as debt for climate swaps.

Sadly, sustainable cities will not be given separate treatment during the six days of the meetings unlike other equally important issues such as debt, poverty, unemployment, gender balance, and climate change in general. The two leaders will at least, however, be on a joint panel to explore innovative ways countries improve people’s quality of life through policies that accelerate low-carbon and resilient growth.

That is not to say that the issue will not feature as policymakers, analysts, NGOs and the media debate how to deliver robust economic growth while still contributing towards meeting the United Nations’ targets.

As the world’s premier development bank, the World Bank is more vocal on this issue with its own sustainable cities blog, an initiative and a global platform. But the Bank and its sister IFI must use the weekes following the annual metings to ensure that it shows it has got the ambition of supporting sustainable cities in their sights.