Striving to achieve the objectives set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, is an important vehicle for improving life for people across the globe. Although our physical and human landscapes may vary, the progress in achieving better conditions for everyone will be greatly enhanced and hastened by working in partnership and using the experience of others.

Sharing and learning

One of CLGF’s primary focal areas of work is to provide a platform to share and exchange good practice and policy lessons on the key issues impacting on successful local government, primarily effective governance, and decentralisation across the Commonwealth. We were therefore delighted to be invited to take part in the recent SDG Local Action exchange meeting held in Barcelona in November.

Organised by UNDP and the Diputacio Barcelona, the meeting focused on innovations in local action to deliver sustainable local development, and the contribution that local government makes, through its work, to achieving the SDGs and to ensuring that no-one and no place is left behind.

In line with the universality of the SDGs, the event brought together practitioners from across the world, some of whom were part of the Global Mayor’s Challenge network, including some of the winners from 2022, and provided a vibrant and participatory platform for exchange and learning.

Innovation driven local improvement

CLGF’s Secretary General, Ms Lucy Slack facilitated the opening session on Innovating local public policies, how to really do it? This very much set the tone and the parameters for later discussions. The inspiring presenters Rogelio Biazzi Solomonoff, Chief of Staff, Municipality of Rosario, Argentina; Matthew Kwatiznetz, Director, New York University, Urban Lab, USA; and Ferran Martos, Planning and Evaluation Expert, at the Municipality of Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain; shared examples of the ways in which their respective cities had used innovation to drive change and development.

A number of key themes emerged in the session and subsequent discussions among the participants on innovation at the local level, including:

• the importance of political leadership;
• community engagement and active participation of all local stakeholders in planning and development;
• the potential of digitalisation; the need to understand the value of your assets as a local government, such as land, and how to deploy them effectively; and
• the importance of adequate resourcing to enable the delivery of new approaches.

The value of regular review and evaluation to enable learning and scaling up was also stressed.

Focusing on specific themes

In later sessions the meeting focused on specific thematic areas and how particular places had innovated, including creating livelihoods; putting the lessons from the Global Mayor’s Challenge into practice; visualising innovation in cities; the political challenges of local innovation; financing innovation; and procurement. A full set of presentations and resources from the meeting is available, with the recordings from the sessions and from participants uploaded on youtube.

Ms Slack said: “Access to practitioners and models of good practice is at the heart of CLGF’s network, and it was wonderful to join many of our members and partners at the SDG Local Solutions meeting in Barcelona.”

Share experience locally

She urged local government stakeholders to check out the resources and said: “I would encourage our local government association and ministry members to use your own domestic networks to share these examples and others as widely as possible.

The full report will be shared as soon as it is available.