By Erwin M. Mascariñas
Correspondent
TOGETHER with Manila, Butuan City is one of two cities in the Philippines and in South East Asia to be named in the 50 Champion Cities qualifying as a finalist in the 2021 Global Mayors Challenge, a global innovation competition that identifies and accelerates the most ambitious ideas developed by cities in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
With the challenge focused on elevating the most important innovations generated in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, 631 cities from 99 countries around the world applied for the first Bloomberg Philanthropies’ 2021 Global Mayors Challenge.
From June through October, the 50 finalists will refine their ideas with technical assistance from Bloomberg Philanthropies and its network of leading innovation experts.
Butuan, a first-class highly urbanized city in the region of Caraga, plans on leveraging predictive data to bolster local farmers.
According to Bloomberg in a statement, Butuan faces high rates of hunger and food insecurity, in part because of its struggles around local food production. The city will fine-tune an ineffective agricultural market by giving farmers predictive data to make better decisions about the type and amount of crops to plant and fix some commodity prices to reduce risk on vegetables and high-demand foods.
Butuan City Mayor Ronie Vicente Lagnada in a statement said that being named as one of the top 50 finalists in the 2021 Global Mayors Challenge is a milestone for the city that would help its farmers and communities.
“We are hoping that the positive outcome of this competition will ensure an adequate supply of affordable and nutritious food while improving the food logistics and value chain system in the city,” said Lagnada.
Butuan City plans to use the Agribusiness Model Innovation dubbed as Inclusive Agricultural Development and Acceleration Project (I-ADAPT) which creates a catalytic mechanism together with an agribusiness value chain ecosystem that will give a demand forecast and will create price prediction models that would link farmers planning production.
“Our city looks forward to joining and learning from the global community of innovative cities as we work to improve upon our idea in the months ahead,” Lagnada added.
As a Mayors Challenge finalist, Butuan now advances to the four-month Champion Phase of the competition. 15 of the 50 cities will ultimately win the grand prize, with each receiving $1 million and robust multi-year technical assistance to implement and scale their ideas.
The capital of the Philippines, Manila is also advancing to the final rounds carrying the vision to build a 21st-century data infrastructure to improve the city.
According to Bloomberg Cities Networks, Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world and lacks reliable data, making it impossible to understand the depth and breadth of the issues affecting its residents.
Go Manila, the proposed idea of the city, is a suite of new policies, processes and digital platforms to build the first modern data infrastructure in the city’s 450 years history.
The two cities will advance to the four-month Champion Phase of the competition where the finalists will refine their ideas with technical assistance from Bloomberg Philanthropies and its network of leading innovation experts.
“By helping these cities test their ideas over the coming months, we will have a chance to identify cutting-edge policies and programs that can allow cities to rebuild in ways that make them stronger and healthier, and more equal and juster,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies and 108th mayor of New York City.
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