There’s no question about it: we cannot achieve universal health coverage (UHC, SDG target 3.8), or indeed any of the SDG health targets, without the local governments that are in direct contact with populations. 

Local governments play a crucial role in planning and delivering the services necessary to achieve UHC. They have the ability to build primary health care systems that are truly “caring” and people-centred, as they are directly responsible for protecting the health and well-being of their constituents. They are also closest to the communities and individuals they serve, often acting as the first point of contact.

But local governments alone cannot achieve health for all. We must support meaningful social participation and empower communities through formal participatory governance mechanisms. 

Civil society and community participation help to hold governments accountable and improve the responsiveness of UHC policies. They ensure programmes are integrated with social protection policies, reach their full impact and remain relevant for end-users. This is particularly important for women and girls, as well as for communities who often find themselves on the margins of society, such as migrants, persons with disabilities, persons living in poverty and the elderly. Women also shoulder the main burden for protecting our health at the frontline and in communities and must be supported in this work.

These are a few of the reasons local governments must be part of global health conversations and need stronger legal, institutional and fiscal frameworks that provide them with the necessary decision-making power to people’s needs – particularly those related to health and social protection.

UHC2030 is honoured to collaborate with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG). Our collaboration emphasizes the importance of achieving UHC to support resilient and thriving communities. We facilitate dialogue between local government representatives and UHC advocates on how to build a safer and healthier future for everyone by making our health systems more resilient and equitable. 

We welcome the UCLG Pact for the Future as an important step to make the right to health a reality for all.

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?

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.

Esteban, why think about the future of resilience? 

The last week of August was terrifying here in Barcelona—10cms balls of ice fell from the sky, and one of the giant hailstones killed a toddler! The same week, the Pakistan record-flooding affected 33 million people turning villages into islands. Both in the same year that Ukraine’s cities are being destroyed by a conflict that escalated into human devastation. Whether natural or human-made, headlines of bizarre events, climate emergencies, viruses and conflicts are becoming common. 

In 50 years, the number of disasters has increased five times. So, how not to think about the future of urban resilience? 

Every year, 26 million people are pushed into poverty by disasters. And when accounting for impacts on well-being, disasters cost around $520 billion to the global economy each year. In other words, resilience is the starting point of a sustainable future and thriving communities.

With a resilience lens, local governments can prepare their cities to prevent damage while strengthening their communities and urban systems to resist and recover stronger and better, leaving no one behind. 

Resilience in cities or regions? 

That’s a distinction we should not make or negotiate—resilience at all levels. Undeniably local governments are the first line of response as the effects of disasters are most felt at the local level. Yet, the severity of the impact and the ability of the city to resist go beyond local and regional boundaries. Chronic stresses within the urban system, like informality, gender and digital gap, political discord, economic recession, lack of housing, and basic infrastructure, determine the resilience of the city and the community. 

Together national, regional and local governments play a role in putting ambitious and credible plans in place—defining priorities and actions that integrate the needs of communities, the possibilities of technology, and the local capacity for building resilience.

Are we still in time?

If we move together and scale up action, yes. That’s what drives our collaboration with UCLG—a resilient urban future is the heart of our common agenda. One recent contribution to the municipal movement are the Resilience Learning Modules developed by UNDRR, UCLG Learning and UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Global Programme. The modules guide local and regional governments into implementing de SENDAI framework and the New Urban Agenda to ultimately reach the global goals. And will be presented at the 7th UCLG Congress on October 13th, the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Thank you, Esteban.  

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

As local and regional leaders from around the world convene at the UCLG 7th World Congress in Daejeon, the strong, collective sense of global crisis will be impossible to ignore. Delegates will re-assess the role of the municipal and regional movement, re-establish their commitment to the Paris Agreement and New Urban Agenda, and contribute to the post-SDG process, while proactively considering options and scenarios for a breakthrough facilitated by a ‘Pact for the Future’. They will do so with an acute awareness that their fellow citizens at home are worrying about concrete multiple and often overlapping crisis points. While the pandemic may have been the dominant concern until recently, it is now surpassed by a combination of crises linked to the war in Eastern Europe and a fragile international political order, global energy and food supply, and the early effects of the climate emergency. 

Equally, the governance implications of permanent crisis must not be brushed aside. While convenient at present, hoping for a return to normal mode governance anytime soon will not only be seen increasingly as naive but ultimately as dangerous. Governance renewal for the 2020s will require adjusting our institutional structures to emergency mode while dealing with live crises. Crucially, the complex emergencies we are facing today demand governance well beyond established disaster response, relieve, and recovery. Complex global emergencies such as global heating, pandemics and contemporary inequalities are long emergencies beyond social memory, they are political, lack trigger moments and are difficult to define. The type of emergency governance required to tackle these will have to be built around a capacity for deep prioritisation, managing trade-offs, political competence, and public leadership. 

The role of city and regional governments as part of governing complex emergencies must not be underestimated either. This role will have to build on local governments’ strengths such as their agility, flexibility, proximity to people, and in-depth understanding of interrelated systems. Financing and budgeting will have to adapt and acknowledge the role of fiscal autonomy and new capacities to generate own-source revenues. Local public services will have to adjust to exceptional times, acknowledge structural changes in demand, adopt flexible staff re-deployment mechanisms and encourage strong cooperation across service operators. Ultimately, municipal and local government will have to lead more effective territorial responses to complex global emergencies and re-embrace two fundamental logics of urban governance.

First, the recognition that urban governance is fundamentally multilevel. Even under normal mode policy making and service delivery, most tiers of government are involved in urban affairs. Under emergency mode, multilevel co-operation, co-production and co-delivery moves beyond a value driven distribution of state power and becomes a precondition for effective emergency response. To Enhance multilevel emergency governance cities and regions must take on a strategic decision-making role and not just bear operational responsibilities. Success relies on close feedback loops between executive decisions and their impacts on the ground, it needs to employ mechanisms that can quickly aggregate inputs from different local governments, and should be built around a platform for continuous information and experience sharing. 

Second, the importance of urban governance as a political rather than a technocratic approach. Possibly the greatest challenge of governance renewal for and under crisis modes will be to increase the democratic legitimacy of emergency action. Radical and rapid policy intervention inevitably lead to tensions between long-established frameworks for ambitious participation, good governance, and representation. Instantaneous and technocratic decisions, limited political debate and absent political mandates for emergency action manifest such tensions. But emergency governance also establishes synergies and opportunities for democratic renewal with clear triggers for wide engagement – citizens as agents for change, a new confidence in the collective and increased motivation of the general public to contribute. 

Over the last few years and at the intersecting crisis points of the pandemic, the climate emergency, political confrontation and social unrest, cities, regions and civil society have already established many practices that can be learnt from. Emergency assemblies, digital citizen wallets, youth councils, expanded voting rights, decentralised emergency responses and far-reaching emergency response consultations are just a few examples. These practices are increasingly informed by feminism thought, care ethics and advances in governance by empathy. The joining-up of concrete, territorially embedded intervention and broader normative frameworks is what the municipal movement can clearly offer the new emergency governance. It is an offer that must be deeply embedded in scenarios for breakthrough and a pact for the future. 

* Philipp Rode is the Executive Director of LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Emergency Governance Initiative is a joint programme by UCLG, Metropolis and LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is identifying implications for urban governance for addressing global emergencies at the city and regional level. This initiative aims to gather insights on how to build institutional capacities for more effective urban and territorial responses to complex emergencies and the governance of grand challenges.

Le Congrès accueillera une session spéciale, « Le Futur des Droits Culturels façonnent le nouveau Développement Durable », organisée par la Commission culture de CGLU dans le but de montrer la manière dont les villes et les organisations culturelles du monde entier ouvrent la voie vers le développement durable, en plaçant la culture comme composante clef et en partant d’une approche fondée sur les droits. La session sera étroitement connectée avec les efforts développés par la Commission culture pour intégrer le rôle central de la culture dans la localisation et la mise en œuvre de l’agenda 2030, et pour atteindre un objectif culturel dans l’agenda post-2030.

Dans la perspective de cette réunion essentielle et sans précédent, alignée avec la session spéciale mentionnée précédemment, et dans le contexte de la mise en œuvre des agendas internationaux pour la culture et les politiques culturelles, la Commission culture est également impliquée dans l’organisation de plusieurs autres activités et événements, qui constituent d’importants jalons dans le positionnement de la culture en tant que levier du développement.

Plus particulièrement, la Commission culture prendra part à la Conférence Internationale de l’UNESCO sur les politiques culturelles, Mondiacult, organisée 40 and après la première conférence de ce type dans la Ville de Mexico du 28 au 30 septembre. La Conférence comprendra l’événement parallèle « Scale Matters: Cities upfront for Cultural Rights », organisé par la Commission culture de CGLU et le World Cities Culture Forum (WCCF) le prochain 28 septembre 2022 (14h00-15h00 heure locale) à Los Pinos, qui sera suivi par l’événement parallèle « From Policy to Practice: The Role of Culture in the 2030 Agenda and Beyond », organisé par la Commission canadienne de l’UNESCO, l’Université de Toronto, le Réseau Arterial, Culture Action Europe, ICOMOS, l’IFCCD, IFLA, le CIM et la Commission culture de CGLU le même jour de 15h00 à 16h00, heure locale, à Los Pinos.

De plus le 27 septembre 2022 (18h00-20h00 heure locale), la Commission culture organisera, en collaboration avec la Ville de Mexico, la Cérémonie de Remise de Prix du Prix International CGLU – Ville de Mexico – Culture 21, ainsi qu’un Dialogue sur les droits culturels dans les villes, au Théâtre de la Ville « Esperanza Iris ».

Enfin, et non des moindres, la Commission culture, en étroite collaboration avec la campagne #culture2030goal et avec le soutien du Colegio de San Ildefonso et de la Ville de Mexico, organiseront un événement spécial lors duquel un document pionnier permettra d’introduire une proposition pour un Objectif explicite consacré à la culture dans l’agenda et les cadres de développement durable post-2030. L’événement se tiendra le 27 septembre 2022 de 14h00 à 17h00, heure locale, au Colegio de San Ildefonso dans la Ville de Mexico.