UCLG
Dic 16, 2011
At the first day of the Second Preparatory Session on Rio+20, Mayor Bloomberg reminded participants of a side event on sustainable and just cities that mayors knew as no other how high the stakes are in the sustainability debate.
He asked for local authorities to be seated at the table during the Earth Summit and called national governments to include mayors in national delegations.
The Statement delivered by UCLG on behalf of the Local and Regional Authorities in close coordination with ICLEI called for addressing the importance of local and regional governance in the outcome document as a way to overcome the implementation gaps of the international commitments faced until now.
Local and Regional Authorities further called for a multipartnership based institutional framework and expressed the support for the creationg of an International Council on Sustainability.
During the first day of session the United States, Turkey and Singapore made reference to involving cities to contribute to the outcome document allowing them to build on the successes shown. Turkey and Singapore stressed the need to include Sustaible Cities as and important issue to be addressed by the conference.
The USA is in favour of a short political document with no work plan but rather voluntary commitments attached.
The European Union with no reference to subnational governments, emphasises the need include all stakeholders in the process and see as a major operational outcome the definition of a green economy roadmap.
The G77 stresses the lack of will of the developed world to address the issue of poverty erradication. They request addressing food security and sustainable agreeculture within a multilateral framework on cooperation with adequate resources. G77 call for consistency with the principles of universality, democracy, transparencey, cost-effectiveness and accountability.
Overall there seems to be an emmerging consensus on the need of an International Sustainability Council that will report directly to the General Assembly.