Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Time: 16:00 - 17:30 (UTC+4, Baku time)
Location: Multipurpose Room 06 - Baku, Azerbaijan
WUF13 Networking Event | Hosted by IFLA with UN-Habitat, UNEP and WHO
About the Event
“Housing the World” cannot be achieved in a vacuum. Housing relies on the landscape for everything: clean air, soil, water, biodiversity, identity, and culture. Yet the landscape, the “ground beneath our feet,” remains without a dedicated international governance framework. This networking event, hosted by the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) in partnership with UN-Habitat, UNEP, and WHO Urban Health, and supported by ISOCARP and AIPH, serves as a critical milestone in the journey toward an International Landscape Convention (ILC).
Building on the momentum of the 2011 UNESCO expert seminar, the endorsement at WUF11 (2022), and the 2024 UN-Habitat Urban Thinkers Campus in Birmingham, this working session will consolidate global support for a convention that gives a voice to the everyday landscape. It will gather endorsements from nation-states, building on interest from Japan, Greece, and the UAE, and demonstrate how an ILC integrates the mandates of UN-Habitat (housing), UNEP (biodiversity and climate), and WHO (health) into a single holistic framework for territorial management.
Safe and resilient housing is physically rooted in the landscape. Without an ILC to govern the land upon which housing is built, housing solutions will remain fragmented and vulnerable to climate shocks. This session positions the ILC as the essential governance instrument required to secure the environmental and social infrastructure that makes housing safe and communities resilient, and will outline the roadmap to the official launch of the ILC at the international environmental exposition in Japan in 2028.
If you have any questions or would like more information about the event, please contact estefania.rodriguezdelpuerto@un.org.
