This is the BBC World Service. I'm Leslie Kirwin and this is a program about mayors

and what they can do for the cities you live in.

Open, let's open, let's open. Open.

Let's open.

Time is right.

Now's time to start forging close worldwide network of cities.

Recently a new global parliament of mayors was launched in the Hague in the Netherlands.

It was attended by mayors from across the globe.

And on behalf of all the esteemed mayors of Africa, we are indeed honored to be here and God bless.

Because as mayors we are not only talkers we walk

the talk and we do what need to be done. We are in a position to make a critical difference to how the world is governed and whether or not our world actually survives.

This is Dr. survives. and founder of this global parliament.

He argues that now that more than half the global population lives in cities

and, given the nature of both the local and the global problems we face,

we must look to cities rather than nation states for solutions.

The nation state is too large for participation, too large for community, but too small and

too constrained to deal with the global interdependent problems of the modern world.

Every challenge we face in the 21st century is a cross-border problem.

Health pandemics, our global, ecology and environmental warming, our global.

War and terrorism are increasingly global problems, not a problem of nation-state against nation-state,

markets in commodities in finance finance, and in labor.

Immigration, in other words, is global and interdependent.

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