Dr Greg Munro, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, examines how local government can maintain its vital role in promoting and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in following the precepts of the New Urban Agenda.
National governments, through the UN and other agencies, have recently made some strong and ambitious commitments to transform the lives of people globally, including the 2.3 billion citizens of the Commonwealth. These commitments include the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, incorporating the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the New Urban Agenda. These agendas provide a roadmap for a fairer, more equitable and sustainable world for all.
As the new Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), the first global meetings I attended were the World Congress of Local and Regional Governments in Bogota and Habitat III in Quito, the UN’s conference on housing and sustainable development; with more than 36,000 participants from 167 countries, this was an impressive event and gave me a good insight into the mechanisms of how these global agendas are shaped and the work we all have to do to make these goals a reality.
Local government and the SDGs
One of the big omissions in developing and implementing the Millennium Development Goals was insufficient involvement of local government, realised all too late in the day when many countries were having difficulty in making enough progress…
Dr Greg Munro
Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum
