New challenges for local and regional leaders as 2015 approaches

12.11.2014

Haikou invites UCLG members to prepare their Global Agenda in the year of the organization’s tenth anniversary

The members of the UCLG World Council will meet between the 23 and 26 of November in Haikou (China), by invitation of the Mayor of the city of Ni Qiang. This year, these meetings are organized in conjunction with the Guangzhou Award for Urban Innovation ceremony.

More than 300 mayors and elected representatives, local and regional leaders, and experts from more than 40 countries, are expected to attend. On the occasion of the World Council, five debates will be organized around the following themes:

Local Economic and Social Development: The Role of Local and Regional Governments
Service Provision in Inclusive Cities and Territories
Access to Water Key for a Sustainable Future
Innovating in Governance to Bridge Inequalities
Local and Regional Governments in the Development Agenda

These debates will allow the exchange of experiences and opinions and improve local and regional policy decision-making at state and global levels.

The World Council will be an opportunity to analyze the achievements of recent years, celebrate the organization’s 10^th anniversary, and design the Global Agenda of Local and Regional Governments. The organization will also adopt its Work Plan for 2015.

Defining the Global Agenda of Local and Regional Governments

All politics is local. After all, politics, whether local, regional, or national, should be at the service of the daily needs of the people. Therefore, the new Global Agenda needs strong local leadership, and UCLG should be a catalyst of this leadership by developing a Global Agenda owned by local and regional governments.

Voicing the interests and views of its membership in international decision-making processes has become extremely important for the work of UCLG as a whole. As declared by Kadir Topbaş, Mayor of Istambul and UCLG President: “The world we are living in is undergoing some unprecedented drastic changes. Local government, including all its components- cities, metropolises and regions, is at the forefront of these changes. Within the past few years, local government and local governance have become the reference point and the major factor of the global and economic social structure”.

The statutory meetings of UCLG will allow the organization to analyze and define the great challenges that it must face by 2015, a year in which an unprecedented number of important international decisions on a wide range of topics will be taken.