1.1 From the Sustainable Development Goals to decentralized cooperation: the multi-governance and multistakeholder approach of AICCRE Multi-governance approach Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the new Urban Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Addis Abeba Agenda for Action on Financing for Development, represent a global response to current challenges and a first approach to a common international strategy. Climate change, social and economic inequalities, poverty, migration flows, are just some examples of problems that cannot be tackled by a single country, but which require the joint work of Member States and local authorities around the world. As also reiterated in the Bucharest Declaration on Fostering Partnerships for Sustainable Development of 19 April 20191, local and regional governments have a key role to play in the implementation of global agendas, just as their National Associations have become fundamental to facilitating the process of accompanying cities in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. AICCRE works in partnership with CEMR and the ‘‘Platforma’’ network to train local and regional authorities and lead them to taking international cooperation actions, while Agenda 2030 has become for many countries, including Italy, a tool to accompany cities and regions to decentralized cooperation. The
European Commission has also recognized the value of local authorities and their Associations, and since 2015 DG DEVCO2 has established a successful partnership with ‘‘Platforma’’ to improve decentralized cooperation between European local authorities. Talking about Agenda 2030 means referring to a global context, not only in terms of objectives and targets, but also in terms of cooperative partnerships and multi-level governance. In this report we will try to summarize the process undertaken by AICCRE in implementing and placing SDGs at international, national, regional and local level. AICCRE’s strategy started in 2015, and it took three years of work to reach the Venice City Solutions 2030 objective: a platform for international meeting and exchange on SDGs addressed to local authorities, whose participation in the governance of the Agenda represented the starting point of the reflections started by AICCRE. Local, regional, national and European institutions, in fact, must interact not only at the level of actions and the sharing of objectives, but also in the planning of the Agenda. A first contact has been established with the Italian Municipalities and Regions. Italian local authorities have never been the main players of cooperation at national level, with some exceptions. This is due to the fact that the competencies and resources needed to undertake exchange actions with third countries are mostly regional. In a country of more than 7900 small and medium sized municipalities, with 10 metropolitan cities and 107 provinces, the competencies of local governments have changed over time, but adequate training in development cooperation has not always been associated with the new responsibilities; or insufficient resources have been allocated to the assigned competencies.
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The Declaration was adopted at the International Conference 2030 Agenda: Partnerships for Sustainable Development, organized during the Romanian Presidency of the European Council.
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DG DEVCO - Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development of the European Commission.
