Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown attending climate conference in South Korea next week

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Photo / Greg Bowker

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is attending the World Climate Industry EXPO at Busan in South Korea next week.

He will be accompanied on the four-day trip by councillor Richard Hills, chair of the planning, environment, and parks committee, and the council’s chief sustainability officer Matthew Blaikie.

Brown was invited to join the ‘city summit’, a roundtable discussion on ‘Green Smart Cities’ and ‘Carbon Neutrality’, and will present Auckland’s carbon-neutral strategies and successes while learning about other cities’ approaches to the environment.

Councillor Richard Hills, who is travelling to South Korea with the mayor. Photo / Supplied

The Auckland delegation will also visit exhibitions on the latest energy technologies and sign the ‘Joint Declaration of the City Mayors Roundtable’, reaffirming Auckland’s climate commitments.

Brown, who is looking at future options for the council-owned Ports of Auckland, will visit the Port of Busan during the trip. The port is the largest in South Korea and ranked sixth in the world’s container throughput.

Busan, the second largest city in South Korea, has been a sister city of Auckland since 1996.

The trip from May 25 to May 29, is being funded by the organisers and partly self-funded by the mayor. This is the third overseas trip by Brown since he was elected in October last year. He has made two trips to Sydney to look at light rail.