London, 26 November: Freetown, Sierra Leone is the newest member of C40 Cities. Freetown joins 93 cities worldwide committed to delivering on the highest ambitions of the Paris Agreement and to limit global temperature rise to below 1.5°C. Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr is a vocal supporter of the Global Green New Deal, launched at the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen in October as a solution to tackle inequality and the climate crisis together.
In 2020 Freetown is committed to planting 1 million trees to build resilience against flooding and absorb carbon dioxide. In January this year, Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr launched the Transform Freetown plan, a three-year vision for the development of the city. It aims to work with residents to address a range of issues from waste management and housing, to improving urban planning and tackling environmental degradation.
Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, said: “Freetown’s C40 Cities membership reflects our dedication to addressing climate change and its impact on our city’s residents. We’ve collectively identified our most pressing climate change challenges and we have been developing plans to respond to these. Before becoming a C40 Cities member, we were already making strides towards improvements in sanitation, environmental management, urban planning and urban mobility.
“As a C40 member, we will now have the benefit of access to significant resources, both technical and financial, to support the implementation of our plans and the achievement of our climate action targets. As a city, we are grateful for this privilege and excited about the future!”
Mark Watts, C40’s Executive Director, said: “We are thrilled to have Freetown on board as the newest member of C40 Cities, led by the brilliant Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr. C40 cities around the world recognise that we are in a global climate emergency, requiring swift and ambitious action to secure a healthy, resilient and equitable future for everyone.
“Failure to address the climate crisis is having devastating consequences for the world’s great cities and their residents. It has never been more urgent to adapt cities to an already changing climate and act immediately to limit global emissions. Mayor Aki-Sawyerr’s climate leadership will be an asset to the C40 network, and we are excited about working closely together to create the future we want.” – Press release
