By Sallieu S. Kanu
Mayor Joy Belmonte presenting the Mayor of Freetown Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr with the Key to Quezon City.
In her capacity as C40 Cities Co-Chair, the Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr was honoured on Friday to serve as the keynote speaker for the C40 Cities Southeast Asia Regional Academy.
Hosted by Mayor Joy Belmonte and Quezon City, the largest city (population 3.4m) in the Philippines capital, the event on Inclusive Climate Action brought together city leaders from Jakarta, Indonesia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Quezon City as well as C40 Cities Advisors from across the region and from Freetown.
The sessions on gender inclusivity, accessing finance for climate action, youth engagement and multilateral cooperation provided opportunities for her to share the work that various C40 Cities are doing globally to combat the climate crisis and their experiences in Freetown.
‘’Peer learning is an essential and effective element of C40 Cities’ operational framework so together with my Freetown C40 Cities team (Pius Nishimwe, Sallieu Kanu and Fatmata Kanyako), the event was also an opportunity for Freetown to learn from others. Of note and interest to us was Quezon City’s urban farming model – the city has approximately 1,300 urban farms across the municipality in places as diverse as the grounds of police stations and areas previously used as illegal dumpsites! This intervention addresses food insecurity caused by climate impacts, greens the city and provides livelihoods,’’ Aki-Sawyerr said.
‘’We will continue to engage the Quezon City urban farming team to learn from them as we scale up our existing urban farming interventions in Freetown.’’
During her short visit she witnessed a typhoon, monsoon rains and an earthquake (3 on the Richter scale). ‘’With schools closed for 3 consecutive days as a result of these extreme weather events, the need for urgent climate action, and the resources needed by cities to implement that action, could not have been more evident,’’ she said.
She extended her sincere thanks to Mayor Joy Belmonte for her warm hospitality, for her incredibly inspiring and inclusive leadership, and for presenting her with the Key to Quezon City.