Conference

“REGIONS AND CITIES MAKING SDGs HAPPEN”

11th of April, Committee of Regions, Brussels

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Content

What are the SDGs? ................................................................................................................................... 3

About the “Regions and Cities Making the SDGs Happen” ......................................................... 3

Presentation of surveys ........................................................................................................................... 5

Political debate on EC’s reflection Paper ......................................................................................... 6

Good practices on SDGs ........................................................................................................................... 6

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What are the SDGs?

SDGs or Sustainable Development Goals are part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015 and serve as a guide for the international policies on the development cooperation towards sustainable development . There are 17 SDGs with 169 associated targets to reach until the year 2030, addressing a range of social needs including education, health, social protection and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection. The EU has played an important role in shaping the 2030 Agenda, through public consultations, dialogue with the partners and in-depth research, and has committed to implement the SDGs both in its internal and external policies. Following the adoption of UN’s agenda, it was necessary to integrate the SDGs into the European policy framework by setting out a vision for sustainable Europe by 2030 and beyond. The long-awaited paper “Towards Sustainable Europe by 2030” has been published on 30th of January 2019 and followed by the conference on the 8th of April discussing how to best translate the UN’s SDGs at European level. Read the whole Agenda here.

About the “Regions and Cities Making the SDGs Happen”

On the 11th of April, The European Committee of the Regions (CoR), the Council of European

Municipalities and Regions (CEMR) and EUROCITIES gathered together and organized a conference

“Regions and Cities Making the SDGs Happen”. The conference focused on the implementation of the

SDGs at local and regional level with the presentations of 2 surveys conducted by the CoR-OECD and by

CEMR-PLATFORMA to map local and regional actions on the SDGs. Furthermore, a politicial debate has

been held reacting to the Commission’s recent Paper “Towards a Sustainable Europe by 2030” followed

by a session showcasing achievements on SDGs on local and regional level.

The event was webstreamed. More information available here.

AGENDA

TIME PROGRAMME

14:30

Welcome

Karl Heinz Lambertz, President of the CoR

14:40

Defining the territorialisation of the SDGs, surveying the implementation of

SDGs at local and regional level

Stefano Marta, Coordinator, Territorial Approach to SDGs Cities, Urban Policies

and Sustainable Development Division, OECD, and

Audrey Parizel, Policy Officer, ECON Commission Secretariat, CoR

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Nathalie Noupadja, Head of research and studies, CEMR, and

Marlène Siméon, Director, PLATFORMA

15:10

Political debate on the EU Reflection Paper Towards a Sustainable Europe by

2030

Moderator: Bert Kuby, Head of Unit, ECON Commission Secretariat, CoR

Debaters:

Markku Markkula, Chair of Espoo city Board, Finland, CoR First Vice-President

Kathleen Depoorter, Vice-Mayor of Evergem, Responsible for International

Cooperation, Belgium, member of CEMR

Masha Smirnova, Policy advisor social affairs, EUROCITIES

15:40

Coffee break

16:10

Good practices on SDGs and methodologies to territorialise them

Moderator: Silvia Ganzerla, Policy Director, EUROCITIES

Panellists:

Maria Angeles Elorza Zubiria, Secretary-General for External Action, Basque

Government, Spain

Camilla Gunell, Minister for Environment and Enterprise, Åland Government,

Finland

Ola Nord, Head of the City of Malmö EU office, Sweden

Lydie Gharib, Project Officer, Urban Development Department, Saint-Fons, France

Natalia Vera, Secretary-General, Network of Regional Government for Sustainable

Development, Nrg4sd

Stefan Kuhn, Deputy Regional Director, ICLEI Europe

Q+A

17:45

Wrap-up and concluding remarks

Angelika Poth-Mogele, Executive Director for European Affairs, CEMR

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Presentation of surveys

1. The CoR-OECD have carried out an online survey on “The key contribution of regions and

cities to sustainable development” aimed towards representatives of local and regional authorities

and stakeholders on their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The survey has

been carried out from 13 December 2018 to 1 March 2019 and gathered answers from 400

respondents. Stefano Marta and Audrey Parizel presented the survey results outlining the main

findings.

Key findings of the survey include:

59% of respondents are familiar with the SDGs and currently working to implement them.

Among respondents representing regions or large or medium cities (more than 50 000

inhabitants) this share rises to approximately 80% or more, while for small municipalities the

share is 37%.

58% of the respondents currently working to implement the SDGs have also defined indicators

to measure progress on the goals, with local indicators much more commonly used than those

of the EU or UN.

The most common challenges in implementing the SDGs - highlighted by half of respondents -

are "Lack of awareness, support, capacities or trained staff" and "difficulty to prioritise the SDGs

over other agendas".

More than 90% of respondents are in favour of an EU overarching long-term strategy to

mainstream the SDGs within all policies and ensure efficient coordination across policy areas.

The key results of the survey are summarised in the results note, while the full figures are available in

the annex.

2. Nathalie Noupadja from the CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions) and

Marlène Siméon from PLATFORMA (Local and Regional International Action) presented the surveys

their organizations jointly conducted in 2018 and 2019 (still ongoing). The surveys “The Localization

of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda” focused on the role of local and regional governments and

associations in SDGs and used the same questions in order to track the evolution in results. The survey

explored awareness, national context and actions in implementing SDGs to identify their needs and help

overcome main challenges (lack of knowledge, awareness and training, insufficient data available at

local level, lack of financial resources, lack of support from other tiers of government, etc.). The aim of

the survey was to compile more practices to share, create dialogue and to assess how local and regional

governements perform in terms of SDGs so they can provide them help/better tools in implementation

and monitoring of urban devekopment strategies. They emphasized the importance of localization of

SDGs and integrated approach in multiple levels of governance in achieving the 2030 Agenda and

explained how this kind of study is a necessary prerequisite to assess the SDG performance in general.

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Political debate on EC’s reflection paper Following the presentations of the surveys, a political debate has been held as a reaction to the EC’s recent publication “Towards a Sustainable Europe by 2030”. Markku Markkula, Chair of Espoo city Board, Finland, expressed positive remarks regarding the First Scenario from the Paper emphasizing the importance of political foundation as a link to the five enablers. He stressed the need for the integration of policies and more concrete measures for the future underlining the importance of the role of the cities and bottom-up approach. As a good example for SDGs, he points out the benefits of smaller areas acting as ecosystems and collaborating as such with other ecosystems in Europe. Kathleen Depoorter, the Vice-Mayor of Evergem, Belgium, expressed how Europe’s towns and regions feel this paper comes a bit late. “We have been waiting for it for more than three years,” she said. “There is no sense of urgency in this paper. This will lead to more years of discussion which will prolong concrete actions. 2030 is now.” Ms Depoorter then added that “Europe should show the way towards a new economic and social model of development.” She supports the Second Scenario and has expressed her doubts on the Third Scenario as there is no ambition on EU level for external actions. Reflecting on the statements from the Paper how “cities should become the strivers in SDGs”, she points out that the cities have been active for years in tacklings the SDGs while waiting for the EU to act but also stressed the fact that there is need for improvement (more actions on multi-levels of governance, multi-stakeholders involvement, more awareness raising). Masha Smirnova, Policy advisor social affairs from EUROCITIES, agreed on the delayed timing of the EU reaction and said she would like “that it is more vigorous and more action oriented” but that it is good that the EC at least put emphasis on the integrated approach, although it lacks concrete measures. She highlighted that cities are the true champions in SDGs, making even more efforts than national governements. Read the full Paper here.

Good practices on SDGs Camilla Gunell, Minister for Environment and Enterprise from Åland Government, introduced good practices from Åland Islands which have been recognized by the Commission as their “Development and Sustainability Agenda and the barkraft.ax Initiative” won the 1st European Sustainability Award. They focused on adopting a true bottom-up approach creating a network of different stakeholders to develop and coordinate the implementation of the Agenda. The Agenda has one Vision and 7 Strategic Development goals with strong social component and has been adopted by the Parliament of Åland and integrated into governmental budgeting which has been an essential tool for implementation. Maria Angeles Elorza Zubiria from Basque Governement presented the Basque 2030 Agenda, developed by the Basque government as the first government to do this in Spain. They focused on the SDGs that are more relevant to their needs and have identified concrete measures for implementation with 50 indicators to measure the success. They have incorporated multi-level and multi-stakeholders cooperation with public-private partnerships in order to achieve the SDGs and have successful projects derived from this Agenda.

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Ola Nord, Head of the City of Malmö EU office from Sweden, emphasized the political aspect of implementing the SDGs but stressed the fact that political desicisons have no value if there are no concrete measures like allocation of money or systemic changes. The City of Malmö approached the SDGs by creating change internally in the administration, simplifying the process and making everbody in different departments aware of the SDGs to perform their work in compliance with the SDGs. Lydie Gharib, Project officer from the city of Saint-Fons in France, gave a brief presentations of the city’s Agenda 2030, a comprehensive, non-experienced SDG approach. They have developed a “Territorial Development Framework Plan” using the Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities, an online toolkit for local European authorities which helped them in the design and implementation. Natalia Vera, Secretary-General from Network of Regional Government for Sustainable Development, explained the results of their survey which was conducted in 6 regions in 26 countries with the conclusions that more sectoral policies, internal coordination and raising awareness is necessary. She stressed that Agenda 2030 is not an additional agenda (many authorities had problems with prioritizing the Agenda with other strategies) but a framework for actions, complimentary with other strategies creating synergies between different sectors. She also highlighted the importance of allocating the EU money to local and regional authorities for implementation of the SDGs as well as the importance of collecting practices to create a catalogue of practices available to everyone. Stefan Kuhn, Deputy Regional Director from ICLEI Europe, explained that SDGs should serve as a compass and a map in policy making and proposed to look at SDGs from a different angle, in the sense of how they can help cities develop and why they are attractive for cities to implement them. He stressed that SDGs are helpful if there is a process behind them and they improve consensus on sustainability. He pointed out the importance of involving the citizens, not just politicians if we want to make a positive transformation.

FINAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THE PANELISTS:

- Integrated approach is important - 2030 Agenda is just a roadmap for the actions to be implemented by different actors - Political commitment needs to be complemented by the public-private partnerships

(otherwise the change is just on the paper) - The right tools are necessary for the implementation - It is desirable to integrate different agendas (starting from the UN) - SDGs are a necessity, we need to address them for the future of the planet - We can use already existing funding opportunities for achieving the SDGs - Use the SDGs to identify how they can help you to have a sustainable city

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