On 22 June 2018 East Asia Regional Executive Committee Meeting was held at the ICLEI World Congress 2018 in Montreal, Canada. The Regional Executive Committee (RexCom) is the governing body of ICLEI to guide and shape the Network’s strategy and activities. The Members are elected every three years.

Convened newly elected members and advisors for the 2018 to 2021 term, the meeting provided an opportunity to reaffirm ICLEI Member’s commitments to urban sustainability in East Asia.

The meeting started with the opening speech from Satoshi Uemura, Deputy Mayor of Kyoto on behalf of the Chair, followed by welcome messages from Ashok Sridharan, ICLEI President and Mayor of Bonn, and Gino van Begin, ICLEI Secretary General.

Van Begin highlighted the strong momentum created by the establishment of the Beijing Office and the role of Members to scale up actions toward the new ICLEI pathways adopted by the ICLEI Council on May 30 2018. The 5 ICLEI pathways, namely low emission development, nature-based development, circular development, resilient development, and equitable and human-centered development, are recognized as the key interconnected pathways that enable local and regional governments to implement change across urban systems.

The RexCom Members and ICLEI offices shared their achievements and development in the region and had discussions on how to accelerate ICLEI activities and city engagement for systematic change in the region. The Members reached an agreement to share their work plans in consolidating synergy, encouraging sister cities to join the global network, and seeking possibilities to engage North Korea cities in the network.

The participants included Huey-Ching Yeh, Deputy Mayor of New Taipei; Bo-Youn Hwang, Assistant Mayor of Seoul; Hunsung Lee, Chief Director of Environment Division of Suwon; Hironori Hamanaka, Chair of Japan Office; Alex Zhang, Executive Director of Eco-Forum Global and Directors of ICLEI Korea Office, Japan Office, Kaohsiung Capacity Center and East Asia Secretariat.