ORU takes part in the annual meeting of the Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation

The SIF annual meeting was held on the 19th April in Washington, USA, to present a new sustainable and resilient infrastructure tool 

ORU Fogar attended, represented by the Catalan Government, the annual meeting of the Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation (SIF), which was held on the 19th April 2017 at the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington, United States, on the margins of the spring meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund. Andrew Davis, representative of the Catalan Government and of ORU, participated as a speaker at the panel on "Views from future IISS users: subnational governments around the world".

The meeting focused on the promotion of the tool International Infrastructure Support System (IISS, called Source), a platform for governments and public administrations for the development of resilient and sustainable infrastructures projects.  The panel in which ORU participated, dedicated to the use of the program in the subnational governments, was moderated by Christophe Nuttall, Executive Director of the network member of ORU, R20. Nuttall stated that the session wanted to show the participants the importance of the regions in the context of infrastructures and sustainability, but also the will of regional governments to take advantage of the Source tool in their projects. 

Other members of the panel were the vice-president of the Assembly of European Regions (AER), Magnus Berntsson, and ICLEI’s Executive Director, Angie Fyfe. On his part, Andrew Davis explained that the subnational governments are able to develop low-carbon emission and climate-resilient infrastructures. He praised, as an example, the identification of climate-related projects eligible for funding through R20’s “100 Climate Solutions Project Campaign”, with the collaboration of ORU Fogar. He also expressed the will of ORU, R20 and other associated networks to provide their member regions the opportunity to benefit from programs like Source to secure financing and to attain sustainability in their projects.  

In this regard, he explained that ORU wants to develop a training program in Source to help its regions. All these considerations are reflected on a declaration of support for the Source tool untitled  “Maximizing financing opportunities to build global green economy: For a consistent and standarized preparation of sub-national green infrastructure projects” which was signed by ORU Fogar, AER, FMDV, ICLEI and R20.