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Liverpool hosts world cities

As cities and towns around the world expand daily, Liverpool is hosting a high-level, international event on city resilience. In the past 20 years, disasters have killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance. The World Bank has calculated that each year disasters push…

Liverpool city. Photo: Wikipedia

As cities and towns around the world expand daily, Liverpool is hosting a high-level, international event on city resilience.

In the past 20 years, disasters have killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance.

The World Bank has calculated that each year disasters push 26 million into poverty and cost the global economy USD 520 billion.

This year the United Nation’s agency responsible for human settlements and sustainable urbanization, UN-Habitat, along with the cities of Shanghai and Liverpool have chosen: Building sustainable and resilient cities as the theme for World Cities Day on 31 October.

“While cities are centres of action, decision-making and commerce, they are, by virtue of their concentrations of population, also centres of risk and hazards,” said UN-Habitat Executive Director,Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif. “If we don’t take urgent action – we could see future disasters cause suffering and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

This year’s World Cities Day is a call to action for all of us to rethink how cities can protect their populations against sudden shocks and long-term stresses.”

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