Our world is at a foundational moment. The pandemic placed us in front of an unprecedented scenario, but also gave us a renewed sense of purpose to deliver truly transformative action, to overcome the current levels of inequality, address the environmental crisis, and challenge the widening cultural divide. The 2020 World Council mandated the World Organization to pursue a Pact for the Future of humanity based on three principles: people, planet, and government, building on the legacy of the Durban Political Declaration.

The Pact for the Future, The Daejeon Declaration is the key outcome document of the 2022 World Congress and defines the Strategic Priorities for the Organization 2022 to 2028. With the Pact, local and regional governments re-state that they are ready to join national and international partners in bringing about meaningful change.

The World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders and UCLG Congress was the stage to ensure that the Pact for the Future speaks to the UN Summit of the Future and the SDG Summit of 2023. Twin high-level consultations on the future for People, Planet and Government framed the political vision of our constituency and were built on the aspirations of our national and international partners, which will further represent a crucial lever to ensure that our constituency plays its part within a renewed multilateral system to achieve the global development agendas, such as the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and the New Urban Agenda. To meet the expectations of current and future generations and break through as one.

The Pact for the Future for People places people at the center, deepening the needs of current generations and expanding the rights of future ones by guaranteeing access to public services and the commons. As we acknowledge the impact of growing inequalities within and between cities, the Pact seeks to deliver fairness and intersectional justice for everyone and for every place.

The Future for the Planet promotes systems and ways of living in harmony with our planet while building resilience and sustainability through policies that renature our production and consumption models will be crucial cornerstones of the Pact for the Future – and an endeavor that no actor nor level of government can achieve alone.

The Future for Government is founded upon the call of our communities who are increasingly pleading for the transformation of governing systems. We are in a once-in-a-generation opportunity to review and improve our tools to respond to the challenges we face, to ensure we drive a profound transformation of our societies and our systems.

The three twin consultation sessions resulted in municipal pledges for the Future of People, Planet and Government that were brought to the World Council on the 14 of October and set the ground of the future advocacy of the constituency of Local and Regional governments and its partners for inclusive, just and equal societies.

The visions and aspirations reflected in the Pact will be shaped into actionable commitments throughout 2023 and serve as the strategic vision for the World Organization in the coming years. Motions presented by all members will further deepen the policy visions and serve as a reference to the inputs of the whole local and regional governments constituency represented by the Global Taskforce.

Three political leaders have been appointed as Ambassadors for the Pact for the Future: Ada Colau, Mayor of Barcelona as Ambassador for the Future of People; Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris as Ambassador for the Future of Planet; Yücel Yilmaz, Mayor of Balikesir as Ambassador for the Future of Government. 

Why is UNCDF engaged in the UCLG 7^th World Congress?

David Jackson: UNCDF and UCLG have a longstanding partnership on local government finance. It is natural for UNCDF as the UN Hub for Subnational Finance and UCLG as the world’s largest network of cities and local governments to come together. Both our organizations believe that a global financial ecosystem that works for cities and local governments is fundamental to delivering on the global agendas. Yet the current financial architecture is not equipped to provide adequate access to finance for cities. Therefore, in 2018, UNCDF and UCLG, in collaboration with FMDV, established the Malaga Global Coalition for Municipal Finance as a unique alliance to enable subnational governments to access financing. Since then, our organizations have been working towards the ambition of the Malaga Coalition. The UCLG World Congress is a unique platform for advocating for the Malaga agenda. Atn the last UCLG Congress in Durban, the International Municipal Investment Fund (IMIF) was launched as an instrument of the Malaga Coalition. Now, three years later, it is time again to take stock of progress and present how far we have come.

What messages does UNCDF want to convey at the UCLG Congress?

David Jackson: We believe that local government finance is development finance and it is a foundational driver for a green, productive urban future that serves people, protects the planet and empowers communities. This is illustrated in our flagship publication “Local Government Finance is Development Finance”, which will be launched at the UCLG Congress. Three years on from the last UCLG congress, there has been progress in all 5 elements of the Malaga reform agenda, which we want to celebrate. On 1) increased intergovernmental fiscal transfers, we see the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) becoming a 30-country global vehicle for local climate adaptation. In addition, the World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment (SNG-WOFI) jointly developed by OECD, UCLG, with the support of UNCDF, is becoming a global reference point for subnational finance and will be highlighted in a session “Bridging the Information Gap on Subnational Government Finance” on 14 October. On 2) enhanced own source revenue mobilization, one of the world’s largest local government capacity building programmes has been developed. On 3) expanded domestic capital markets for long-term debt financing, some governments are now leading the way in subnational bonds. On 4) city-friendly guarantees, at least one sovereign government and the European Commission are moving ahead; and on 5) city-friendly investment funds, we will celebrate the UNCDF local government lending initiative itself, along with the above-mentioned International Municipal Investment Fund.

None of these successes were in place at the inception of the Malaga Coalition. Please join our session “Local Government Finance is Development Finance: Connecting People, Planet and Government” on 12 October to find out more about these exciting developments and visit our booth at the Urban Exhibition. Limited copies of our flagship publication in 8 languages will be available as prizes during our session. We look forward to continuing to advance the municipal finance agenda with UCLG and other stakeholders.

Confronted with a closing window of opportunity, it is now time for the local multilateral system to demonstrate it is ready to join national and international partners in bringing about change. With the Pact for the Future, UCLG members and the organized constituency of local and regional governments acknowledge this foundational moment. The World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders and UCLG Congress will be the stage to ensure that the Pact for the Future speaks to the UN Summit of the Future and the SDG Summit of 2023.

The Congress will be officially inaugurated in-person on October 12 by the President of of the Republic of Korea Mr. Yoon Suk-yeol and Mr. Lee Jang Woo, Mayor of Daejeon Metropolitan City, with a special keynote of former UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon. UCLG Governing President Mr. Jan Van Zanen, Mayor of the Hague and President of the Association of Dutch Municipalities will present the ambition of the World Organization for the Summit, in presence of the UCLG Co-Presidency, constituted by the Mayor of Konya, Mr. Uğur İbrahim Altay, the Mayor of San José, Mr. Johnny Araya, the Mayor of Xi’an, Mr. Li Mingyuan, the Mayor of Kitchener, Mr. Berry Vrbanovic, Mr. Carlos Martinez, Mayor of Soria and UCLG Special Envoy for the New Urban Agenda.

Later that day, the Opening Plenary of Local and Regional Governments Breaking Through as One will present a general view of the Pact for the Future, introducing the context that brought us here and the need to action a transformation that places care at the heart of our common action. Twin high-level consultations on the future for People, Planet and Government will follow on the coming days to frame the political vision of our constituencyand build on the aspirations of our national and international partners, which will further represent a crucial lever to ensure that our constituency plays its part within a renewed multilateral system to achieve the the gloal development agendas, such as the 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement and the New Urban Agenda. To meet the expectations of current and future generations and break through as one.

The Future for People: Equality and Care

The Pact for the Future for People places people at the center, deepening the needs of current generations and expanding the rights of future ones by guaranteeing access to public services and the commons. As we acknowledge the impact of growing inequalities within and between cities, the Pact will seek to deliver fairness and intersectional justice for everyone and for every place.

The consultation “The Pact for the Future for People: Equality and Care”, to be held on 12 October at 17:30 KST, will outline the political vision of our constituency, as closest level of government to the people, towards ways of living that place equality and care as indispensable building blocks of any sustainable and thriving society. It will include voices such as those from Ms. Rohey Malick Lowe, Mayor of Banjul, Ms. Carolina Cosse, Mayor of Montevideo, Mr. Philippe Rio, Mayor of Grigny, Mr. Yousef Al-Shawarbeh, Mayor of Amman, Ms. Núria Marín, President of the Barcelona Provincial Council and Mayor of l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Mr. Altai Kulginov, Mayor of Nur-Sultan, Mr. Carlos Moedas, Mayor of Lisbon, and Mr. Aníbal Gaviria, Governor of Antioquia.

The aspirations of our partners will be represented, among others, by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization, Mr. António Vitorino, Director-General of the International Organization for Migration, Ms. Anita Bhatia, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women, Ms. Reem Alsalem, United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, alongside leading voices from civil society organizations, such as Ms. Vandana Shiva, Climate change activist and writer, the youth constituency represented by youth activist Ms. Elana Wong, and Ms. Lorena Zárate, founder of the Global Platform on the Right to the City.

The Future for the Planet: Transforming our Relationship with Nature and our Ecosystems

Promoting systems and ways of living in harmony with our planet while building resilience and sustainability through policies that renature our production and consumption models will be crucial cornerstones of the Pact for the Future – and an endeavor that no actor nor level of government can achieve alone.

In the consultation “The Future of the Planet: Transforming our Relationship with Nature and our Ecosystems”, to be held on 13 October at 17:30 KST, our constituency will define its political vision to achieve an ecological transformation of scale at the global level. Some of its representatives will include Ms. Fatimetou Abdel Malick, President of Nouakchott region, Ms. Irací Hassler, Mayor of Santiago de Chile, Mr Fernando Gray, Mayor of Esteban Echevarría, Ms. Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, Ms. Fozia Khalid Warraich, Chairperson of Toba Tek Singh District, or Ms. Noraini Roslan, Council President of Klang.

The voice of our partners will be represented among other by Ms. Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction; Mr. Hisham Amna, Egypt’s Minister for Local Development, whose government will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27), alongside leading voices from civil society organizations, such as Ms. Pefi Kingi, QSM, Pacific Civil Society Leader; Mr. Andrew Potts, coordinator of the International Council on Monuments and Sites’ Climate Change and Heritage Working Group; and the input by the youth constituency represented by climate activist Mr. Daniel Akinjise.

The Future for Government: Governing local and global realities as one

Our communities are increasingly calling for the transformation of governing systems. We are in a once-in-a-generation opportunity to review and improve our tools to respond to the challenges we face, to ensure we drive a profound transformation of our societies and our systems.

The consultation “Governing local and global realities as one: The Future of Government”, to be held on 14 October at 13:30 KST, will see how our constituency present their political vision to ensure that commitments of the Pact with regards to critical issues like multilateralism, decentralised cooperation, municipal finance or emergency governance speaks to the upcoming renewal of the global agendas. Among the representatives of local and regional governments, speakers will include Ms. Claudia López, Mayor of Bogotá, Mr. Barthélémy Dias, Mayor of Dakar, Ms. Souad Abderrahim, Mayor of Tunis, Mr Emilio Jatón, Mayor of Santa Fe, Mr. Fernando Gray, Mayor of Esteban Echeverría, Ms. Taneen Rudyk, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, or Mr. Yasutomo Suzuki, Mayor of Hamamatsu.

As a multi-level and multi-stakeholder discussion that concerns all people, the consultation  will further build on the aspirations of friends and allies of the movement that have inspired and accompanied the UCLG Pact for the Future process, such as Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa, President of the 73rd General Assembly, Ms. Marina Ponti, Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign, and Ms. Lucy Slack, Secretary General of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CGLF), as well as representatives from the youth and organised civil society such as Mr. Greg Munro, Director of the Cities Alliance and Ms. Genie Birch, President of the Global Alliance of Partners, or Mr. Florencio Venté, from the UN Major Group on Children and youth.

Altogether, the three twin consultation sessions will result in a municipal pledge for the Future of People, Planet and Government that will set the ground of the future advocacy of the constituency of Local and Regional governments and its partners for inclusive, just and equal societies.

Participants in the UCLG Congress have a huge opportunity to support the Generation Equality Forum (GEF), initiated in 2021 by a global multi-stakeholder partnership, to eliminate gender inequality, and meet the priorities and targets established in the Global Acceleration Plan (GAP) for Gender Equality.[2] UCLG is already a strong leader in the Action Coalition on Feminist Movements and Leadership; and local and regional governments in Nigeria, Spain and Turkey, amongst others, have made commitments to advance the GAP. The more local and regional governments make and implement strong commitments, the sooner we will be able to transform women and girls’ daily lives. GEF offers the platform for national, local and regional governments, feminist and youth movements, the private section and foundations and international organizations, including the UN system, to work in solidarity to achieve common goals by 2025.

The UCLG Pact for the Future, with its feminist emphasis on Care, also has the potential to contribute to GEF. UN Women looks forward to working together and helping the Pact and GEF to bring feminism’s transformative power across localities and regions.

[1] This data is collected for SDG 5.5.1b reporting. As of January 2022, 136 countries and areas provided data on women’s representation in elected local deliberative bodies. These data show a wide variation from one country to another, from 1 to 67%, with only 16% of countries (22 countries) reaching gender balance (40% or more). On the opposite end, in 9% of countries (12 countries) women’s representation is less than 10%. Half of the countries have less than 28% of women represented in local government

[2] UNW – GAP Report – EN.pdf (generationequality.org)

Since then, this strategy has driven the development of several tools such as the International Municipal Investment Fund (IMIF, capitalized at 500M€ and managed by Meridiam), peer-to-peer programs supported by the European Commission, or a set of specific services to help local governments mobilize additional resources ; coaching or matchmaking sessions for instance.

After over three years of deployment, additional efforts are needed. It is a question of improving results while accelerating impact so as to finance in greater and improved ways a more important number of local governments – within which, more specifically, the secondary cities of the Global South.

To this end, a renewed global partnership is proposed through a new platform called “Finance Your Cities”. This global initiative aims, firstly, at increasing the impact of transformative systems and, secondly, supporting the localization of financing for sustainable urbanization and territorial development.

Finance Your Cities proposes four action levers, operated by FMDV in close collaboration with the UCLG World Secretariat: (1) operational country programs; (2) an annual conference; (3) an annual international award; (4) an annual publication.

In this sense, FMDV hopes that the 2022 UCLG World Congress in Daejeon to be a decisive turning point in the discussion and preparation of this new milestone on local finance, in order to prepare the launching phase in 2023.

The powerful influence of UCLG’s broad network has been essential in securing more opportunities than ever for mayors to participate in international migration policy deliberations. Together with UCLG and our Mayors Mechanism partners, we mobilized mayors worldwide to join the first-ever UN International Migration Review Forum and deliver 70 local actions directly to the President of the General Assembly that make a tangible difference in the lives of migrants and refugees.

Local and regional governments’ approval of the Lampedusa Charter during the UCLG Congress marks yet another critical milestone for city leadership on migration. While national governments deal with questions of borders and visas, it’s at the city-level that the world must address the immediate needs of migrants and refugees – shelter, food, healthcare, education, and employment. The Lampedusa Charter offers new momentum to our movement of mayors leading the way for urban migrant and refugee inclusion at the forefront of global policy. Milestones like these prove city government actions can ensure human mobility benefits everyone in society through multilateral cooperation and innovation.

During the 2022 UCLG Congress, we call on city governments worldwide to join our Call to Local Action for Migrants and Refugees. Cities’ contributions will keep the world on track to meet commitments set out in the Global Compact for Migration and Global Compact on Refugees and strengthen our municipalist movement to make migration work for all.

Additionally, as the science of climate change continues to advance, and in recognition of COP27 and a likely focus on climate resilience and adaptation, we also look forward to supporting UCLG World Congress discussion overall on climate. Our work on climate finance through the City Climate Finance Gap Fund and in support of the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience will help to frame discussions in Daejon.

When joining the Cities Race to Resilience, Mayor Abigail Binay (GCoM Board Mayor from Makati, Philippines) said, “the nice thing about it is that it keeps you focused. It has a platform for signatories where resilience experts assess and review your city’s initiatives to ensure you are on target. It is a meaningful global collaboration between partners and fellow leaders.” 

We look forward to engaging at the Congress with this collaborative spirit.

The OECD and UCLG are key partners that aim to foster economic and social well-being of citizens at the subnational level. In agreement with UCLG, the OECD strongly believes that effective multi-level governance, combined with a fair distribution of resources among levels of government, is crucial to improve local public policies. Through this co-operation, the OECD endeavours to enhance dialogue with regions and cities in order to promote territorial development. 

Acknowledging the importance to collect and analyse data to this aim, the OECD and UCLG jointly lead the World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment – SNG-WOFI, whose primary objective is to expand knowledge and to promote dialogue on multi-level governance and subnational finance around the world by collecting and analysing standardised quantitative and qualitative data. The third edition of the SNG-WOFI, which will be launched on October 24, 2022 at the OECD headquarters in Paris, encompasses data from 135 countries, covering around 85% of the world surface area and more than 90% of the world population and GDP. At the UCLG World Congress, a teaser session dedicated to the SNG WOFI will be held on Friday October 14, to present the methodology and features of the new edition and discuss, with the participants, the role of such a World Observatory in policy and societal debates.

The online MCR2030 dashboard is becoming more active, showing potential to systematically link municipalities to services.  National governments and national municipality associations (including Bosnia Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gambia, Jamaica, Mexico, and Philippines) are using MCR2030 to convene and facilitate more common and coordinated approaches on national-local disaster risk governance.

MCR2030 partners are shifting to a more proactive and collaborative approach particularly on communications, advocacy, and capacity building. Over 280 service providers are offering their technical support to cities. 

In short, MCR2030 has reached a ‘critical mass of membership’ and is demonstrating more examples of a pivot to action and implementation. However, to achieve what MCR2030 was designed to do, that is help cities implement programming to build resilience, we must continue to drive the initiative both at the global and regional levels by – Pushing a focus to implementation and Enhancing engagement of MCR partners.

To address these challenges UNDRR is taking every opportunity to engage with cities and partners. The UCLG World Congress Daejeon 2022 is a great opportunity to network with local governments and partners. With the vast local government membership of UCLG it represents the perfect occasion for networking and amplifying the message for safer and resilient cities. That is why UNDRR and the MCR2030 is making our presence felt at Daejeon. Where will you be 12-14th October?

However, local governments cannot solve current and the future challenges alone. It must work with residents, organized civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. We also need to rebuild trust between these local stakeholders to work together effectively. We need local governments to be open. Open to sharing knowledge, data, and information that empower residents to take part in decisions and allow businesses to support the delivery of public services. Open to sharing decision-making responsibilities to residents and civil society organizations and jointly identify priorities and solutions. Open to receiving constructive feedback to improve where is needed and praise where it is due. 

The World Congress and Summit of Local and Regional Leaders is a great opportunity to  renew the commitment for more open local governments. For this reason, OGP Local, the Open Government Partnership’s local program, is pleased to be part of the Congress where local open government leaders will share their experiences and call for more open governments. From Bogotá, to South Cotabato, from Paris to Kaduna State, there are over 100 local governments leading the way by taking action and implementing innovative open government practices as part of OGP Local. Member governments of OGP Local bring together citizens, civil society organizations and private sector partners, to co-create an action plan of ambitious open government reforms. OGP Local is a global platform for local action on open government that can be used to make the ambition and promises that will come out of The World Congress a reality. 

By Open Government Partnership