(1) Humanity is eating into the natural capital of the planet and eroding its resilience when it should be living off the income it regenerates. When we consider how degraded our ecosystems already are, there is far less to sustain today than there was 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, cities and urban areas are major contributors to this trend.

Over 400 million people in Africa currently live in urban areas, a number that will triple by 2050. Rapid urbanization in many industrializing countries can be traced to push factors such as displacement due to violent conflict and a worsening of livelihoods due to natural disasters, including climate change. (2) The mass migration into cities can also be attributed to the attractive pull factors of urban areas from improved access to food, healthcare and education and perceived prospects of a better life.

We can trace the increasing resource intensity of the urbanization process back to the industrial revolution. Since then, disregard for resource generation and use has significantly contributed to climate change and the loss of soil carbon, natural fertility of farmland and biodiversity all over the world.

An overwhelming share of charcoal produced in rural areas in Africa is transported to urban areas to be used for cooking. (3) This is one of countless examples illustrating the dependency of a metropolis on the area outside its borders. Almost everything we touch in a city is manufactured and originally sourced from the hinterland. That is, most of the raw materials a city absorbs are not generated from inside the city itself but rather from the rest of the planet. It is high time the city gave back.

A new urban agenda is necessary in ensuring that cities not only become resource-efficient and low carbon-emitting, but go beyond that to positively enhance the ecosystems which provide them with goods and services. (4) The solution lies in thinking beyond the vague and unambitious notion of sustainability and, instead, actively working towards regenerating soils, forests and watercourses. The aim is to improve rather than merely sustaining their currently degraded condition.

This new urban agenda transforms urban areas into regenerative cities that dramatically reduce their dependency on fossil fuels, boost the deployment of renewable energies, reintroduce water to the hydrological cycle and make sewage reprocessing and nutrient capture a central plank of urban waste management. (5) A wide range of technical and management solutions towards this end are already available, but so far implementation has been too slow and too little.