Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Mayor speaks in World Urban Forum
By Nereo Lujan
ILOILO City Mayor Jerry Treñas appears to have become a much-sought resource speaker in international conferences.
Fresh from his speaking engagement in a New York conference in May, Treñas was again one of the resource speakers in the 3rd World Urban Forum (WUF3) held this week in Toronto, Canada.
Specifically, Treñas spoke before an audience in the forum "Cities and the Public Realm: Reinvesting in Community Assets" on June 19 at the Pan Pacific Hotel, organized by the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI).
He shared the gains of the Metropolitan Iloilo Development Council (MIDC), the newest Philippine model in "regional city" development. MIDC is composed of Iloilo City and the adjacent towns of Leganes, Oton, Pavia, and San Miguel.
The World Urban Forum is the biggest and leading venue for the examination of one of the most pressing issues facing the world today: rapid urbanization and its impact on communities, cities, economies and polices. Close to 500,000 delegates from 150 countries are coming to the WUF3.
Organized by the UN Habitat, the WUF is held every two years to allow dialogues among urban actors from all sectors -national governments, local authorities, the private sector, communities, the academe and organized labor -- to exchange know-how and generate new ideas.
Treñas joined four other discussants lea by David Crombie, CUI President and Chief Executive Office, and former mayor of Toronto, today's Canada's largest municipal government and urban region.
Other discussants included Ato Arkebe Oqubay, Works and Urban Development Minister of Ethiopia; Ana Lucia La Rovere, superintendent of Area de Desenvolvimento Urbano in Brazil; and Rafael Betancourt, CUI regional manager for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Treñas had recently spoken during the 14th Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development at the UN Headquarters in New York on sustainable development initiatives that seek to address major issues such as energy, industrial, climate change and air pollution.
Treñas, also chair of the League of Cities of the Philippines, led a CUI-sponsored Philippine contingent to the WUF3, which include Guimaras Governor Rahman Nava and Regional Director Evelyn Trompeta of the Department of Interior and Local Government.
Their trip has funding assistance from the Canadian International Development Agency.
Also attending the WUF3 are Iloilo City Planning and Development Coordinator Jose Roni Peñalosa, Guimaras Senior Planner Evan Anthony Arias and CUI Southeast Asian Regional Manager Francis Gentoral.
The Philippine delegation to the WUF3 is headed by Vice President Noli de Castro, the concurrent chair of Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council.
WUF3 is being hosted by the Government of Canada. It will mark the 30th anniversary of the first Habitat Conference, the United Nations conference on human settlements held in Vancouver in 1976 that led to the creation of UN Habitat.
(June 21, 2006 issue)
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