By Alusine Sesay
Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr Mark Watts,C4O Executive Director
You cannot pay to become a member of C40 Cities, but by invitation through the display of exemplary leadership. A city that is showing such amazing leadership that other cities want to learn and copy from and have that voice within the network. That’s the way Freetown became a member, really seen as a tremendous innovator within the African region, but actually now globally. You have to meet certain leadership standards to maintain membership every year. Mayor Aki-Sawyerr has shown an amazing leadership in the fight against climate change crisis. With a very small budget compared to other cities, she has done extremely well in mitigating climate change crisis, said Mark Watts, C4O Executive Director.
Mark Watts is in Freetown on a four-day visit to familiarize himself with the work of the C40 Co-Chair and Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr.As part of his visit, Watts met with senior government officials, including the Vice President and the media.
On Wednesday, Watts met with a cross section of the media at the Freetown City Council conference hall where he dilated on the composition and activities of C40 Cities across the world.
He told the press that C4O is a kind of leadership group, an organization of 100 of the biggest most influential leading cities in the world, including London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Freetown- cities in the world that are having the biggest influence on driving the world to overcome the climate crisis and also a quarter of the global economy.
Watts told journalists that C40 Cities hold 25 percent of the global economy where 600 to 700 million people live, adding that they come together to be a global force in tackling climate crisis globally.
“Climate crisis is the hardest in our cities where the greatest concentration of people are being, but also because mayors control the services under the leverage of government that can be used very effectively to most quickly overcome the climate crisis, particularly in making our cities more sustainable – how we travel, how we live, how we manage our waste energy that we used. So, as a network, what we do is that, we first of all allow our cities to share and collaborate with each other. For example, one city has gotten a great idea: Freetown the Tree Town. Other cities that are far apart are using that same model of community engagement. That is a very hard way of survival of trees and job creation,” he said.
He said as a network they also drive resources into cities to help them deliver better infrastructure and better services for people that reduce emissions,create jobs and improve equity.
“We provide technical support to do that. So here in this city right at the moment, there’s been support for the project preparation for the Cable Car. With our partners, the Germans are providing the technical support to bring that project to a place where it can attract the major capital funding it needs,” he said.
He said they also advocate, bringing together a collective voice to mitigate climate crisis.
In the area of collaboration, he said C40 would collaborate with Freetown to fight air pollution.
“We are going to support Freetown to deploy low cost air pollution sensors right round the city so that we can get accurate data on where the worst problems of air pollution occur. And then look at the measures that needed to address those hotspots, and to make sure that everybody can breathe the clean air that they have the right to and then generate plans to attract the finance to support whatever changes that are needed,” he said.
He spoke about a new project that is geared towards enhancing quick health resilience, a USD100,000 grant awarded to local affiliate programs, of which the Freetown City Council happens to be a beneficiary.
“This was a very competitive program that Freetown has been a winner of. It will strengthen Freetown’s resilience to extreme heat by integrating climate and health data collection, community trading and awareness levels of the risk of extreme heat as well as fostering great inter agency and collaboration,” he said.
On the Cable Car project, he pledged the network’s support towards the project, which he said would be very much viable in enhancing city transportation.
“Finally, we are very much here to support the Cable Car project. We think it is a really world leading example of how to deliver both data mobility within the city in a very environmentally sustainable way, but really include a way targeted at increasing the mobility of those who do not have access to transport.”
On her part, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr said the involvement and participation of the Freetown City Council or Freetown as a city, in C40, allows access to the critical finance they needed to make the required changes or interventions in mitigating climate change crisis.
“C40 Cities has very practically, made it possible for us in Freetown to address our major source of greenhouse gas emission, which at the global level may not be a game changer in terms of climate change, but at the local level is definitely a game changer, from our perspective of our health because the greenhouse gas emission is part of the air pollution,”.
She said the Cable Car will reduce travel time by 50 percent from the safety perspectives of women.
“We all know the challenges women face with transport in the city. So this is one of the very practical examples for what it means for us to be a member of the C40 network. But, beyond this single intervention, as the Co-chair of C40 Cities, it is indeed an honour to be the first Co-Chair of the Global South since it was introduced. As the Co-Chair, it also means that we are amplifying not just the concerns of our city, but of many cities around the world,” she dilated.
As the global Co-Chair of C40, she said she has four priority areas, including access to finance,multi-level governmental collaboration, youth engagement and extreme heat, which Freetown as a city is experiencing.
“We can only be effective if we are able to collaborate both at the level of our constituents, but also the national government. These priorities are reflected not just in our city, not just in cities in the Global South that are in the C40, but cities such as Makeni and Port Loko-cities that are not C40 members,” she noted.
She said the big benefit of working with C40 Cities or being part of the network is that they can amplify messages, not just for the membership but for other cities and other districts.
“We are not going to be solving our challenges not just at the level of Freetown; we need to be solving them nationally. That speaks to one of the big initiatives that C40 launched two years ago at the COP in Dubai in which together with the Government of Dubai, Bloomberg, C40 Cities relaunched something called CHAMPS, which effectively is the Coalition of High Level Ambition of Multi Level Partnership. This basically says the climate action that we need cannot be done just by cities; cannot be done just by nation states; cannot be done just by the private sector or civil society, but it needs us all to work together and that includes the media,” she emphasised.
She dilated on Freetown the Tree Town project which has been a topic of debate across the city, stating that of the 1.2 million trees they planted they have about 82 percent survival rate in 2023.
“What we are going to do is to continue to plant, continue to build resilience of communities, and continue to give our appreciation to communities important in protecting trees. And, C40 has a role to play in that that they are playing already.”
Mayor Aki-Sawyerr further dilated on a possible rain water harvesting project funded by the C40 Cities for which they are currently conducting a research.
“We are currently doing a research study funded by the C40 Cities, an innovative way in which we can harvest rainwater at community level, communities that are not served by Guma currently. Water ways in which using a natural based approach, not high technology, not big dams because we can’t afford that, but there are natural based solutions that can potentially enable us to harvest rainwater in the communities,” she said.
She spoke about the council plans to start reducing organic waste in the city through innovative means.
“We would be starting work in five markets to collect inorganic waste and have them transported to a site where they would be turned into compost. That compost would then be produced to support farmers to increase food production, and then that food to the market. So, we are trying to reduce waste, by first of all ensuring we have better access from the farmers to the market and then from the waste that comes to the market, making sure that we turn them into compost which improves farming activities. That is a project that has been approved. It is 360, 000 United States Dollars project, running over three years, another C40 Funded facility,” she disclosed.
On the youth program, she cited a Bloomberg Youth funding that is also facilitated through C40 Cities.
“So, we have 50, 000 United States Dollars made available to nine youth groups. There would be another 100 thousand dollars for youth groups to do climate related interventions. So, you see how our participation in the C40 cities is very practically helping us to address the climate crisis in the city, amplify the voice of the Global South, and providing opportunities with colleagues outside Sierra Leone but also in Sierra Leone.”
