In the IMFG Perspectives Paper (No. 16), Reducing Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Effective Steering Strategies for City Governments, Sara Hughes reviews the unique strategies of three cities leading the charge: Toronto, New York City, and Los Angeles. The paper identifies three strategies that have proven effective: Building and maintaining a broad-based coalition of governmental and non-governmental actors working toward a common goal; Investing in capacity-building, data collection, and education; and Embedding new ideas, financial tools, and standards into local formal and informal decision-making institutions. “Cities are critical climate change actors, and will be for the foreseeable future,” says Hughes. “Given the jurisdictional and financial constraints local governments face, their climate change goals will demand creative partnerships, new tools and systems, and innovative institutional cultures.” This paper is part of a series of IMFG publications and events focusing on cities and climate change.

Key messages: Autonomy of local government: Responsibilities repatriated from the EU cannot be centralised in Whitehall. Councils have a democratic mandate to lead their communities. We need new devolution settlements in England and across the UK to bring new powers to communities through local democracy. Developing a new legal base for local government: There are many EU laws that affect the day job of local councils. The future review of UK laws of EU origin must be informed about their real world impact. It must lead to new legislative freedoms and flexibilities for councils so that local communities, businesses and consumers can benefit. Securing investment that is currently sourced from the EU: The Government needs to begin developing a growth policy which must be fully funded to deliver its ambitions and be locally driven post-Brexit. This must be designed and delivered by local areas as an integrated replacement for EU funding and existing national schemes to support infrastructure, enterprise, and social cohesion.

Democratic decentralisation through ‘conventional’ institutions of local government is facing increasing challenges, whether from financial pressures, questions of representativeness, difficult central-local relations and from a perhaps growing belief that local government has failed to realise its potential and there may be better ways of achieving societal goals. It is clear there is need to contemplate quite radical change to ensure local government becomes or remains ‘fit for purpose’. This collection of papers illustrates the way in which the role of local government is evolving in different parts of the Commonwealth and provides practical examples of new local government at work. It showcases emerging practice, and highlights success stories from new ways of working and challenges confronting local government in both developed and developing countries. New Century Local Government makes a very valuable contribution to helping understand the changing role of local government, and will ensure that practitioners are up-to-date with the most innovative initiatives in local government planning and administration.

The purpose of the study was to carry out an assessment of local democracy and local governance through benchmarking Aberdeen principles on the local government system in Rwanda to appreciate the achievements and establish gaps and suggest appropriate recommendations for future improvement. As laid in the terms of reference, the study was guided by research questions for each of the 12 principles, which include, Constitutional and legal recognition for local democracy, political freedom to elect local representatives, partnership and cooperation between spheres of government, defined legislative framework, citizens participation in local decision making, open local government – accountability, open local government – transparency, scrutiny of the executive, inclusiveness, adequate and equitable resource allocation, equitable services viii and capacity building for effective leadership. The said Aberdeen principles were used to analyse and assess Rwanda’s local government system vis a vis the Aberdeen principles. In terms of methodology, the study employed extensive desk research, analysing local democracy and local governance structures, systems policies and processes in Rwanda. Evidence was collected and collated through wide-ranging literature review with limited field research.

This resource guide provides practical guidance for designing, implementing and evaluating decentralisation reforms and local government practices to ensure they are as effective as possible. It also synthesises and presents current debates on the impact of decentralisation and local government on poverty reduction, service delivery and conflict as well as providing links to cutting-edge research and recent case studies.