UCLG to undertake regional workshops on the Governance of Local Basic Services

Over the following months, UCLG will hold several regional workshops to discuss the role of Local Government in the Governance of Local Basic Service in the different world regions. As part of the Global Observatory on Local Democracy and Decentralization, UCLG produces a triennial Global Report (GOLD), on key issues of interest to local government. The third report, GOLD III will focus on the governance of local basic services.

A group of experts have been working, under the coordination of Dr. David Satterthwaite to develop a draft report on the state Water, Sanitation, Solid Waste, Transport and Energy in the different world regions. The upcoming workshops mark the halfway point of the GOLD III report process, where the expert driven work is presented to the UCLG membership for corrections and additions, so as to ensure the work truly reflects the vision of local practitioners.

The workshops will take place in the different regions of UCLG: Africa, Asia Pacific, Eurasia, Latin America, Middle East West Asia, and Europe. At this stage of the process, local elected officials, practitioners, service providers and partners will be brought together, with the aim to review the content and build political recommendations to better ensure service provision to their citizens.

The GOLD report aims to be a core instrument in achieving the objective of UCLG: to become the world reference for information and knowledge on the situation of local and regional governments, local democracy and decentralization. Following in the path already laid down by GOLD I and II, the preparation of GOLD III (centered on the Governance of Local Basic Services) is producing important inputs to support the contribution of local and regional governments in the debate on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and on the new UN Post-2015 Development Agenda.

In order to highlight the important role of local governments in the Governance of Local Basic Services and have the opportunity to gather a maximum number of participants, the workshops have been planned in coordination to other important meetings in the local government calendar, such as the Executive Bureau of UCLG Asia Pacific (15-18 May, Gwangju, Korea) and the VII Latin American Congress of United Cities and Local Governments ExperienciAmérica 2013 of FLACMA, UCLG’s Latin American section (12-14 June, Misiones, Argentina). In addition, the European workshop will be celebrated in Brussels, Belgium (9-10 April 2013), meeting with the 3rd European Assises of Decentralised Cooperation in Brussels; and in Africa a workshop is planned in the framework of the Conference of the African Ministers on Decentralization (AMCOD) (12-13 April, Nairobi, Kenya).

The final GOLD III Report will be presented during the IV UCLG Congress in Rabat (Morocco) in 2013 and published in 2014, on the date set by the international community for the assessment of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).