Improving the Quality of Urban Life

The United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme seeks to translate the overarching 10 principles of the UN Global Compact into innovative, concrete and sustainable solutions to intractable economic, social and environmental urban issues.

The Programme achieves these outcomes by identifying, harnessing, focusing and applying existing local capacity within business, government and civil society.

The UNGC – Cities Programme is an urban-focused component of the UN Global Compact. The programme provides a unique model for cities across the globe to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to long-term and intractable challenges based on the ten principles of the Global Compact in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.

Based on the premise that any city, anywhere, contains the capacity to resolve the issues it faces, the Cities Programme offers a framework for building constructive, all-sector taskforces between business, government and civil society, to produce practical responses in areas where single-sector initiatives have previously failed.

The development of new, progressive methodologies such as the Cities Programme has become increasingly critical in the twenty-first century as urban populations outnumber rural growth for the first time and new, complex challenges emerge.

Combining the ideas, knowledge, experience and resources inherent within all three sectors offers a powerful, unique and unlimited capacity to effect change and address these challenges in areas such as waste management, water and sanitation, poverty alleviation, traffic safety and housing redevelopments.

Cities Programme within the UN Global Compact

The United Nations Global Compact and associated Cities Programme are complementary organisations that, together, offer business, government and civil society options for proactively supporting corporate social justice principles and initiatives.

The UN Global Compact

The Global Compact is a business-focused initiative that seeks to bring companies together with UN agencies, labour and civil society in support of ten core principles focusing on the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. The Global Compact recognises the growing influence of the private sector and the subsequent opportunity that exists for corporations to adopt, internalise and apply these key overarching principles in their sectors of activity for the benefit of their companies and the communities in which they operate.

The Cities Programme

The Cities Programme exists to offer metropolises the opportunity to implement the ten principles at a city-wide level, translating these standards into concrete and positive outcomes in everyday urban environments. Working within the Global Compact framework, the Cities Programme makes a clear statement of a metropolis’ civic, cultural and corporate character as well as motivating real and measurable change and encouraging participation in international dialogue.