The 7^th ITU Green Standards Week (GSW-17) has concluded with the adoption of the Manizales Manifesto, expressing the shared commitment of the event's over 850 participants to the development of resource-efficient "Circular Economies" and Smart Sustainable Cities.  

GSW-17 was held in Manizales, Colombia, 3-5 April 2017, hosted by the Municipality of Manizales and Colombia's Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies. The event explored contemporary challenges to city governance and the well-being of city inhabitants, examining the role to be played by information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the pursuit of the United Nations' New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.

"All industry sectors and government bodies are certain to deploy ICTs as part of their portfolio of sustainability measures," said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao. "ITU aims to be a valuable partner to all interests driving ICT innovation, providing technical assistance to the wide range of innovators leveraging ICTs to improve environmental sustainability."

"The ICT infrastructure of a Smart Sustainable City must ensure openness and interoperability, and this can only be achieved with coordinated adherence to common standards," said Chaesub Lee, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau. "The 7^th ITU Green Standards Week highlighted the will of Latin-American cities to drive environmentally sustainable growth with the help of reliable, standards-based ICTs."

Five Latin-American cities that have achieved outstanding success in their smart-city projects were recognized at GSW-17 with La Asociación Interamericana de Empresas de Telecomunicaciones (ASIET) Digital Cities 2017 awards: Villorino and Tres de Febrero (Argentina), the Vitacura area of Santiago (Chile), Bogotá (Colombia), and Xalapa (Mexico).  

"Green Standards Week hosted a diverse range of Latin-American cities to share insight into their smart-city projects, learn from one another and identify successes able to be replicated across the region," said José Octavio Cardona León, Mayor of Manizales. "Manizales was proud to host this event as a contribution to the international collaboration we know to be critical to environmental sustainability."

The Manizales Manifesto represents support for ICTs to play a definitive role in the pursuit of social, economic and environmental sustainability, highlighting a series of actions in service of this aim:

1. Set the vision for your Smart Sustainable City to create an enabling environment for smart-city innovation targeting citizen-centric public services, gender equality and environmental sustainability.  
2. Identify your Smart Sustainable City targets to establish a clear framework for the pursuit of smart-city goals, supported by a policy and regulatory environment that promotes investment in smart-city innovation. 
3. Achieve political commitment at all levels of government to encourage integrated decision-making across branches of government and industry sectors, leading to cohesive smart-city planning and broad-based support for smart-city objectives.
4. Transform an Information Society into a Knowledge Society taking advantage of ICTs to promote sustainable production and consumption patterns, supported by a social vision encompassing the conservation of culture, innovation, open data, information sharing, freedom of expression, plurality, inclusion and accessibility.
5. Bring the Circular Economy to life in Smart Sustainable Cities, maximizing the return on investment by improving the resource efficiency of production processes and the recycling and legal disposal of waste.
6. Make Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) a reality in smart cities to create a secure network of interconnected devices that together form an orchestrated system able to learn from experience, monitor its evolution and introduce improvements autonomously.
7. Build data-driven systems in Smart Sustainable Cities to maximize the value of the data generated by sensors, devices and other objects within IoT networks, based on access and ownership frameworks that incentivize data sharing among smart-city stakeholders while paying due regard to security, privacy and trust.
8. Create your Smart Sustainable City by deploying broadband networks and integrating ICTs into urban operations, guided by clear smart-city action plans that encourage investment and account for related risks.
9. Measure your smart city progress, leveraging performance-assessment toolkits to monitor the relative success of projects supporting smart energy grids and water networks, intelligent buildings, efficient waste management and smart mobility.
10. Shape the global agenda by supporting the work of the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative, a partnership guiding the adoption of ITU's Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities and promoting information exchange on successful examples of smart urban transformations and related procurement and funding models. 

GSW-17 was organized by ITU, in partnership with the Municipality of Manizales, the University of Manizales, the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Basel Convention, the Basel Convention Regional Centre for the South American Region (CRBAS), the United Nations Economic Commission  for  Europe (UNECE), the Telecommunications Regional Technical Commission (COMTELCA), the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and the Inter-American Association of Telecommunication Enterprises (ASIET).

Find more information on the GSW-17 homepage.