“Cities Offer Us a Thousand Ways Forward”: TCG’s CEO Josh Yates Presents at UNEP's Faith for Earth Dialogue on Cities

Faith communities are key forces for turning cities into engines for solving our longest-standing problems of human progress, Thriving Cities Group founder and CEO Josh Yates told the “Faith for Earth” group, assembled remotely by the United Nations Environment Programme on February 21. The forum gathered sustainable development leaders from a broad range of religious traditions to explore the critical role faith communities can play in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals in cities across the globe.

Watch the address:

“The very forces that make cities amplifiers of our greatest challenges—from housing and healthcare to climate change and peace and security—also make them potential amplifiers of our most effective solutions.”

To transform cities into incubators for solving tough problems at scale — from hunger and poverty to climate change and lack of medical care–religious communities provide unmatched resources through a long history of concerns for others as front-line caretakers, community anchors, peacemakers, social catalyzers, and advocates for our highest values.

While acknowledging that religions have often fueled division and exclusion, Dr. Yates said religion can and has “amplified the best in us,” and he invited faith leaders at the forum and across the world to take action by partnering with Thriving Cities and the UN SDG Cities initiative to achieve their goal of making progress on the SDGs in 1,000 cities by reaching one billion people around the world by 2030.

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