Today, C40 Cities announced the launch of a mayoral-led task force to accelerate sustainable economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. C40 mayors are already sharing knowledge and expertise to overcome the immediate health crisis. The Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force will see leading mayors worldwide collaborate to achieve an economic recovery from COVID-19 that enables people to get back to work, while preventing climate breakdown from becoming an even bigger crisis that halts the global economy and threatens the lives and livelihoods of people everywhere.

The mayors will discuss how to use huge public investment in the recovery to create a "new normal" for city economies, based on eliminating pollution and poverty, improving public health and increasing resilience to shocks.

The Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force was unveiled today during a virtual meeting of more than 40 mayors and city leaders from major cities across 25 countries, hosted by C40 Chair and Mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, to share expertise on protecting their residents during the COVID-19 crisis. C40 mayors and senior city officials have been regularly collaborating to share knowledge and solutions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The mayoral task force will be chaired by Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan. Milan is the capital of the Lombardy region of Italy that has seen some of the worst impacts of COVID-19. The task force will be made up of representatives of mayors from every region within the C40 network, many of whom have unparalleled specialist expertise - including Mayor of Freetown Yvonne Aki Sawyerr, who was Director of Planning at the National Ebola Response Centre of Sierra Leone during the 2014-15 Ebola epidemic.

“Our immediate priority is to protect the health of our residents and overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. As we navigate the devastating daily effects of this unprecedented crisis, however, we must also look towards how we will keep our people safe in the future,” said Mayor of Milan and C40 Vice-Chair, Giuseppe Sala. “How we structure our recovery efforts will define our cities for decades to come. It is our responsibility as mayors to ensure that we build a solid foundation so that our cities emerge as healthier, equitable and more sustainable places to live.”

“Mayors are always on the front lines in the face of any challenge, and the COVID-19 crisis is no exception — as our cities have taken swift action to respond to this pandemic, protect the health of our communities, and save lives,” said Eric Garcetti, C40 Chair and Mayor of Los Angeles. “We remain focused on the immediate health crisis, but we have to start planning for the recovery — and this task force will give us a venue to collaborate on the smart solutions needed to preserve public health, restart our economies, and keep forging a path to a more sustainable and equitable future.”

The Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force is the latest in a series of measures C40 has taken to foster international collaboration and knowledge sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to facilitating the exchange of best practices between mayors of the world's largest and most influential cities, C40 hosts critical resources on COVID-19 responses from cities worldwide on the C40 Knowledge Hub. C40 has also partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies to assist in an informed global response by mayors to the challenges of the current health crisis. C40’s Board President Michael R. Bloomberg is making resources available to C40 cities via the Partnership for Healthy Cities, and including C40 mayors in the Bloomberg Harvard Local Coronavirus Response Initiative.

To read the full story, please see the C40 website.