A move to create awareness on the sustainability process being made in the cities as well as inspire citizens to become a part of the process World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) launched a campaign ‘We Love Cities Campaign’ in 2013 which is a public engagement initiative. And Nagpur has been selected among the 53 other cities of the world for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)’s ‘We Love Cities Campaign’.
The campaign engages people across the globe in promoting sustainable urban development by voting for their favourite finalist and posting improvement suggestions for these cities. It gives the general public an opportunity to celebrate, vote, and upgrade their city through suggestions made and addressed to decision makers. Since its inception, over 150 cities have participated and more than 100,000 citizen’s improvement suggestions have been shared with city officials. Along with Nagpur, Kochi and Rajkot cities have also been selected this year for the campaign. With cities accounting for 70 per cent of carbon emissions worldwide and playing a pivotal role in generating the global GDP. They are encouraged to share climate mitigation plans centred in their critical role of building a sustainable and climate-safe future. People of Nagpur can visit the website www.welovecities.org between September 14 to October 11 to vote for your favourite city. They can share what they love about it and also can tell how it can become a more sustainable place for you to live and thrive in. The city which will receive the most number of website votes, social media posts, and suggestion submissions by the end of the campaign period will be declared as the ‘We Love Cities 2020 campaign’ winner. The purpose of this campaign is to build better communication between city officials and the citizens they represent on climate change and sustainability issues. The ‘We Love Cities campaign’ is interwoven with WWF’s One Planet City Challenge (OPCC). When cities join the OPCC, they report their commitments and climate actions within an internationally recognised reporting platform. Cities are then evaluated by WWF and partners, resulting in the selection of national OPCC finalists. In the next step, all OPCC finalists are offered to participate in the ‘We Love Cities campaign’.
