Eurasia Regional Section of the World organization "United Cities and Local Governments"
Eurasia Regional Section of the World organization "United Cities and Local Governments"
UCLG staff, members and partners gathered in Barcelona on February 11-15 for the annual Retreat & Campus to discuss further plans of the organization and create a joint development strategy for 2019. The holding of the UCLG World Congress in Durban (South Africa) this November was an important theme for the discussion.
UCLG-Eurasia was represented by Deputy Minister of Economy of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Vasilii Desiatkin, Mayor of Innopolis Ruslan Shagaleev, Vice-Mayor of Kazan Evgenia Lodvigova, Counselor of the Department for External Economic and International Relations of Moscow Ekaterina Astakhova and others.
Day 1: 11 February
The first day of the UCLG Annual Retreat started with an all-UCLG internal conversation leading up to the 2019 World Congress and Global Summit in eThekwini-Durban. Participants discussed the key pillars of the 2019 UCLG Strategy and Work Plan emphasizing the need to pay special attention to partnerships with civil society, strengthening democracy, the implementation of the Right to the City and the need to build a true youth plan around the organization’s peace agenda.
“We need to find the synergies, and identify the areas where we can enhance each other’s work. Be daring. Be active. Be collaborative. Only then will we identify our joint priorities”, - Emilia Saiz, Secretary General of UCLG.
The afternoon was devoted to interactive sessions on Communication, the UCLG Learning Forum and the Metropolis Governance Committee.
Day 2: 12 February
Day two of the UCLG Retreat focused on ensuring that the UCLG agenda remains relevant and to identify policy recommendations related to strategic topics. UCLG’s work centered on advocacy, learning and reporting has been seen as a way to bring local governments to the centre of the realization of the development agendas.
President Parks Tau introduced the session focusing on linking the work of the UCLG Consultation Mechanisms to the priorities of the World Organization highlighting the need to work in collaboration to achieve the global goals. Participants were invited to join working sessions organized by three key priorities: Leave No Place Behind, inspired by the work of the Policy Councils on the Right to the City, and Opportunities for all; where participants discussed how to guarantee the local implementation of the New Urban Agenda maintaining its universal scope and the specific circumstances of regions, metropolitan areas and cities of all sizes.
Day 3: 13 February
The key topic of the third day was the discussion of the priorities of UCLG Sections. Discussions were devoted to three main areas: climate action, local financing and localization of the SDGs.
Vasili Desiatkin, Deputy Minister of Economy of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), presented a report on combating the effects of climate change in the republic. The presentation aroused particular interest of the participants, since it was about melting permafrost in the region.
The UCLG-Eurasia Project Coordinator Tansylu Nurieva said about the section’s initiatives in the field of localization of the SDGs. The Directory of International Terms, which contains concise and accessible information, became a vivid example of the work of the Secretariat on issues of implementing global agendas at the local level.
Day 4: 14 February
The celebration of the second Local and Regional Governments’ Forum within the High Level Political Summit in New York was among the key issues of the session, in which members and partners of the GTF agreed on the need to consolidate it as a space that goes beyond exchange and becomes a space for the priorities of the constituency to be considered. The UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) presented the two HLPF edition to be held this year, and indicated that the spirit of this year’s Forum would be to hear about concrete actions and steps that LRGs are taking to implement the SDGs.
The day came to an end with the workshop on Reporting and Monitoring of the SDGs, in which the GOLD team at the world secretariat gave insights on how local and regional governments could bring their views to the monitoring and reporting process of the global agendas.
Day 5: 15 February
The last day of our Retreat saw the meeting of the UBUNTU advisory board with the UCLG Presidency. Members of the Presidency and our UBUNTU advisors had a fruitful political debate on the future of the World Organization and on the role that the UCLG World Congress need to play as consolidator of the municipal movement and to strengthen the voice of local and regional governments in the international agendas.
18.02.2019
