Q&A: How New York City's SDG leadership aided COVID-19 response

Penny Abeywardena never expected that part of her job as New York City's commissioner for international affairs would be sourcing personal protective equipment and ventilator parts from the United Nations and foreign governments during a pandemic with her own city at its epicenter.

For her first six years in office as a member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, Abeywardena fostered New York City’s relationship with the world’s largest diplomatic corps and spearheaded the city’s efforts to align its own planning with the global Sustainable Development Goals. Her office leads the Global Vision, Urban Action program to share lessons and progress with other cities around the world.

“New York City is as large, if not larger, than 141 countries, so we felt like what we were achieving here could be relevant abroad. But we also have structural inequities that make sure that we show up with the humility to learn from the Nairobis and the São Paulos,” Abeywardena told Devex.

In 2018, New York announced that it would become the first city in the world to submit a review of its progress directly to the United Nations during the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. During the 2019 U.N. General Assembly, 21 cities agreed to produce voluntary local reviews. An additional 17 announced they would join them at the 2020 World Urban Forum.

“That was the kind of work that my office and my team was focused on: the substantive connection with our member states, with the U.N. community and bringing cities into the conversation,” Abeywardena said.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. By mid-April, New York City was recording roughly 800 coronavirus deaths per day.

Abeywardena, whose term ends this year, spoke to Devex about how the foundation of international relationships that New York City built through its engagement with the U.N. and the SDGs served the city at its time of greatest need.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did your job change with the onset of COVID-19 and with New York City emerging as an epicenter of the pandemic in the United States? What was that experience like?

One of my first observations in those first two months was that many of the diplomats stayed. Many of them refused to leave their staff here. I also think, from a certain perspective, foreign governments wanted the insight of what was happening in a city this big and how we were managing it. One of the decisions I made early on is that we were going to over-communicate with them. This was going to be the most ultimate exercise in transparency because there was so much fear.

I spent most of my time talking to [diplomats]. Ambassadors were calling me. They wanted to know what was happening. They wanted to know how they could help.

We had a reality where our federal government at the time wasn't helping us get the PPE and ventilators that we needed. I'll be honest: I never thought that there would be a pandemic and about how international affairs could be valuable. But we pivoted into becoming chief procurement executives from foreign governments.

I started using the relationships that we had with ambassadors to reach foreign ministries and start getting donations. The U.N. donation [of 250,000 face masks to New York City health workers] came from a direct ask … [and was an unusual contribution] for the U.N. to give to a municipality.

This cooperation with the U.N. and governments came at a time when then-President Donald Trump’s administration was moving forward with U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, questioning the value of the United Nations. It seems like your experience is sort of the antithesis of that. But was that awkward?

It wasn't awkward because we had been doing this work before COVID. You have to hearken back to the whispers of the Trump administration pulling out of the Paris climate accord. We were about 100% sure he was going to do that. And so when he [announced his plans to pull out] ... within 24 hours the mayor signed an executive order becoming the first city in the U.S. directly committing ourselves to the Paris climate accord.

We had already been working on the SDGs, but we created the voluntary local review. So U.S.-U.N. at the time knew what we were doing, but they just looked the other way, which was great for us. We led cities during the Global Compact [for] Migration negotiations in 2018, the work that we've been doing around climate, and then obviously the SDGs and launching the voluntary local review. That all happened during the Trump era.

So when this happened, I think the hardest part was not that [the presidential administration] didn’t have a cohesive plan; it was more that we were actively asking for help and not getting it. And so the recognition, from my perspective, was the pivot into these relationships with foreign governments to get basic PPE that I believe should have come from our national government. And it did not feel awkward because we were already in those conversations and those relationships had been built with foreign governments and with the U.N.

As the pandemic has shifted to lower-income countries, what is the role played by New York City and this broader community of cities?

The reason we do everything related to the SDGs is that we believe it's a common language and framework that allows us to exchange beyond borders. There's been so much outreach to our Health Department to understand what's been happening there. We do events in partnership with consulates where they're bringing in their local doctors and they're having different exchanges. We do things through our Global Vision, Urban Action program, but this is the whole point. We learned all of this. We want to share that information.

Our Black and brown communities got hit the hardest. It was just so disproportionate. As we rebuild, as the policies are being implemented, how do we put that community at the heart of what we're doing? And that is something that we as a city prioritize as we talk to other cities. It's just the fundamental reality that specific communities were disproportionately hit. How do they get centered in the rebuild and redevelopment?

As we're now moving into a different phase of the pandemic, where do things stand with the U.N. and specifically with planning for September’s U.N. General Assembly?

I have not been back on U.N. campus since the mayor and I went there to receive the donation on March 28 [of last year]. It's still closed to the public, and they are doing critical, relevant meetings. But the U.N. is slowly coming back. My understanding is that they're requiring staff to come in at least one day a week.

From the city perspective, we work with Secret Service and U.N. security to ensure that when we have heads of state, we're prepared as a city to host the “VVIPs” [or very, very important persons]. So that is happening. In terms of who is physically on campus, that is a conversation that happens between the president of the General Assembly, who's representing the member states, the secretariat representing the secretary-general and their operational department, and U.S.-U.N. as host country.

So we are part of the conversations, but the leadership in terms of determining how many people, for example, accompany heads of state onto campus — that gets determined among them. And I think that will be finalized later this month.

The General Assembly is typically a major “convening moment” for the global development community, with dozens of side events. What is the city’s message regarding how — or if — those events and gatherings outside of U.N. headquarters should proceed?

We are welcoming folks back cautiously. We are very lucky in that we have put about 9.5 million [or] close to 10 million vaccine doses in the arms of New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs. So that is the reason that we are opening up.

[Tanyanika Davis, deputy commissioner for communications and speech writing, adds that de Blasio has also announced that visitors to New York City can get vaccinated.]

Obviously we want to see people back in New York City spending money, spending time going to Broadway, shopping … all of that necessary core activity. But we want them to be doing it in a safe way — so either to be vaccinated or really thoughtful about masking as they participate in New York City activity in terms of side events.

I know a few events that are likely to happen, but I think in this world, many are going to be hybrid [or held both in person and online]. So nothing's going to be super full. It's still going to be very accessible — especially to people that were never able to fly to New York City — by having these hybrid events. It will be really interesting to see how that all comes together in September.

You recently hosted Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. What did you glean from your interactions with her about the presidential administration's engagement with the United Nations and its community?

We are very pleased to have an administration that we can talk to and exchange best practices with on climate change and gender equity and all the issues related to that. We invited the ambassador to come visit one of our mobile vaccination buses. We wouldn't have been able to do that without the support of the [President Joe] Biden administration, so having a national government that is actively working hand in hand with us to succeed in terms of this vaccine rollout has been significant.

The partnership with the Biden administration, the U.N., and New York City — especially on the SDGs — is a relief. We're back to working together. And we're going to get a lot done because of that.

Update, July 27, 2021: This article has been updated to clarify when cities agreed to produce voluntary local reviews, as well as quotes from Penny Abeywardena on the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ donation of face masks.