WUF13 Concludes With Official Publication Of Baku Call To Action

(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 22. As the 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF13) concludes in Baku, the final text of the Baku Call to Action has been officially published, establishing a comprehensive international framework that urges renewed global efforts to tackle the escalating housing crisis, Trend reports.

Developed through a extensive and inclusive consultation pipeline, the Baku Call to Action explicitly synthesizes the core priorities and strategic recommendations formulated throughout the panel tracks at WUF13, as well as during the months of preparatory multilateral dialogue leading up to the summit.

Rather than operating as a formally negotiated intergovernmental treaty, the Baku Call to Action serves to lock in shared priorities and practical field steps generated via live debates and stakeholder proposals at the forum. The document is engineered to function as a strategic roadmap for collective responsibility and heightened cross-border cooperation in resolving systemic housing deficits across diverse geographic and economic contexts.

With an estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide currently living in substandard housing conditions, the document underscores the urgent necessity for more aggressive, synchronized interventions across all tiers of government to alleviate the mounting pressure bearing down on national housing supply systems.

A foundational pillar of the Baku Call to Action is the institutional mandate that housing must never undergo evaluation exclusively through the narrow lens of physical construction. Instead, the document demands the cultivation of integrated residential ecosystems tightly woven with proactive land-use management, baseline infrastructure, public transport networks, universal utility services, and local economic opportunities.

Throughout the WUF13 sessions, delegations repeatedly highlighted that the global housing crisis is being accelerated by a matrix of interconnected macro-factors. These include soaring real estate prices, speculative land acquisitions, forced displacement cycles, weak regulatory governance systems, and climate anomalies. The Baku Call to Action asserts that mitigating these structural challenges requires a decisive departure from fragmented municipal approaches in favor of holistic, human-centric urban design models.

The final text concurrently directs sharp analytical focus toward the compounding intersections connecting housing security and global climate change. It underscores that populations navigating high levels of residential vulnerability are simultaneously the most exposed to acute climate risks, including catastrophic flooding events, extreme heat waves, and localized environmental degradation.

To build systemic resilience, the Call to Action recommends aggressively expanding public and private investment into climate-resilient housing systems. It advocates for the deployment of nature-based solutions, the deep retrofitting and green renovation of existing residential stock, grassroots community-led development initiatives, and the reinforcement of localized disaster preparedness frameworks.

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