UCLG and Metropolis participate in the UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting on the follow-up of the implementation of the New Urban Agenda

UCLG and Metropolis participate in the UN-Habitat Expert Group Meeting on the follow-up of the implementation of the New Urban Agenda

On March 20-23, 2018, UCLG was invited to participate in the Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on the Quadrennial Report on the Monitoring of the New Urban Agenda, organized by UN-Habitat with the collaboration of the Municipality of Granada and the support of the Andalusian Agency for International Development Cooperation, within the Government of Andalusia.

The meeting, which took place in Granada, brought together a diverse platform of partners, involved at different stages and in different degree in the implementation and follow-up of the New Urban Agenda, to agree on the basic concepts, structure and scope of UN-Habitat’s Quadrennial Report on the implementation process.

The meeting included over 50 participants, with a strong representation from UN institutions, and Regional UN Commissions and agencies, the World Bank, as well as a few experts from member states, academia and civil society, among which members of the Steering Committee of the General Assembly of Partners. Local and regional governments were represented by UCLG and Metropolis, alongside representatives of the city of Mannheim.

Throughout the writeshops and in each of these groups, the UCLG and Metropolis, local and regional government representatives voiced the positions that the Global Taskforce has presented throughout the Habitat III process and the implementation experiences of the constituency.

Methodology

The Expert Group Meeting’s methodology was built on four days of intensive debates and interactive ‘writeshops’, with the ultimate aim of producing a working draft for the Quadrennial Report’s guidelines and blueprint. 

The meeting was arranged around several diverse working groups, each in charge of one of the Quadrennial Report’s main sections and priorities as proposed by UN Habitat. The groups worked on the development of stronger links between the New Urban Agenda, the SDGs and the other global agendas; the core challenges that the implementation of the NUA is facing (urban growth, climate change, demographic change and migration, gender equality, ageing, and the emergence of new technologies, among others); the development of a consistent reporting mechanism supported by a broader participation of diverse stakeholders and platforms; and the framework for an effective implementation via financial means, innovation and capacity building. 

Local and Regional Governments representatives supported the integration of references to the mechanisms developed by different LRGs networks in order to contribute to monitoring and data gathering (from GHG emissions to subnational governments’ finance, as well as the different mechanisms for monitoring urban innovation, decentralization and localization). These contributions have been a fruitful input to a conversation eager to find out about innovative practices and case studies of effective New Urban Agenda localization.

Next steps

The outcome of the Expert Group Meeting is now being revised by UN-Habitat and will be submitted to the attention of the newly appointed UN-Habitat Executive Director. At the beginning of April, the advanced draft will be presented to the Committee of Permanent Representatives of Member States in Nairobi and, finally, submitted to the United Nations Secretary General’s office. After an internal validation process, the final version should be presented to the ECOSOC and to the HLPF next July.

The call from local and regional governments

The invaluable role that local and regional governments can play for the effective implementation of the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was underlined, as well as the need to organize a more structural interlocution specific to the constituency of local and regional governments as referred to in  paragraph 169 of the Quito Outcome document which recognizes the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments (convened by the Global Taskforce) as follow up and monitoring mechanism.

Local and regional government’s organizations gathered in the Global Taskforce are committed to strengthen their involvement in the process towards the establishment of the Quadrennial Reports and the follow-up on the realization of the New Urban Agenda and acknowledge the Habitat III Agenda as a critical accelerator of the Global Goals encompassed in the Agenda 2030, Paris Agreements and Sendai Framework.

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