Representation at United Nations conferences has a grammar, and for years it read the same way: nine seats for the Agenda 21 Major Groups, three for Other Stakeholders. GAP looked at that arithmetic and asked a simple question, described on our GAP at Habitat III page: why should the number of seats be smaller than the number of constituencies?

So GAP wrote to the Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly requesting sixteen seats in the Habitat III plenary, one for each Partner Constituent Group. The request was granted. Sixteen seats appeared in the plenary, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chose to spend part of his time in Quito meeting the GAP Executive Committee to understand the new system.

The sixteen Stakeholders' Roundtables that followed were not decoration. Each PCG proposed speakers and content, turning stakeholder-managed agendas into part of the official programme. GAP is named in paragraph 128 of the New Urban Agenda for exactly this contribution.