The G20 summit in 2022, hosted in Indonesia, brought together leaders from the world’s major economies to discuss and address global challenges. As part of the official engagement groups of the G20, the Urban-20 (U-20) focused on enhancing the G20 agenda by investigating the contributions of cities to global recovery efforts.

Citieslab, in collaboration with the Indonesian Association of Urban and Regional Planning (IAP) and the West Java Province Government, served as a co-chair of U-20. They organized a seminar, “Empowering the Role of Urban-Rural Linkage Toward Integrated Action on Localization of SDGs and Climate Goals at City Region”. The seminar focused on the crucial theme of “Exchanging Research Experience and Knowledge on Urban-Rural Linkage”.

In this session, Dr. Bijon Kumer Mitra from Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) presented the Regional-Circulating Ecological Sphere approach, which strengthens partnerships between urban and rural areas by linking rural natural resource capital with urban production capital. This approach enables simultaneous economic, environmental, and social benefits while promoting sustainable local resource utilization through integrated urban–rural collaboration.