Description

Local Acceleration to achieve the global agendas

The Development Agendas that were adopted throughout 2015 and 2016 are ambitious in their scope, and they represent our hopes that we can improve the way in which we live and work to preserve our planet for future generations.

The constituency of local and regional governments (LRGs) share the sense of urgency expressed by the United Nations Secretary General regarding their achievement as well as the sense of responsibility vis a vis the communities we represent. We believe our current patters of consumption and production, the way we are using resources and the visible drive against gender equality and women’s rights and the growing inequalities make our societies vulnerable and are incompatible with the achievement of the SDGs.

The local and regional movement toward the ‘localization’ of global agendas is progressively expanding to all the regions. It is a testimony of the strength of our commitments. With the mandate received from our communities, as the level of government closest to the people, we are committed to play a leadership role in the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, and reinforce the synergies with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and the Paris Agreement, to transform our world. We are committed to act and accelerate implementation, and we believe that the LRGs associations, as leverages institutions, are crucial to achieve this.

We are aware that we cannot do it alone. We call on governments and the international institutions to embolden their ambitions and accelerate the pace of the needed transformations. To upscale efforts, we need greater cooperation and the national and international coordination mechanism, as well as enough resources to make this happen. 

SDG 16 The fundamental contribution of local and regional governments lies in the daily task of ensuring access to quality public services for all, in building transparent and accountable local institutions, in making proactive measures to end violence and discriminatory policies, and to recover trust in public institutions. Promoting peace and coexistence in our communities, reducing inequality in access to justice and local opportunities in all environments, including schools, work, domestic and public spaces, is at the core of local public action. In the past decade, a number of LRGs have explored new ways to cocreate and coproduce cities through participatory processes and the implementation of Open Government policies as a way to improving satisfaction and trust in public administration and as a basis for a renewed social contract.

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