Guest Blog Jacqueline Burton: Habitat III: Local governments are key to achieving international development goals
Jacqueline Burton, Program Associate, Equitable Development Ford Foundation republished from the Ford Foundation website here World leaders will gather in Quito, Ecuador this October to agree on an international framework for sustainable development at the Habitat III conference. The conference outcome document – the New Urban Agenda (NUA) – is expected to be a complementary framework that will drill into what it will take to achieve a number of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but particularly the goal to: “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.” Although the SDGs and NUA are agreements negotiated and adopted by national governments, it is regional and local authorities – governors, mayors, and leading officials – who will bear much of the burden of what gets laid out in these types of intergovernmental agreements. That’s because they work most closely with communities, so they know the needs of their residents a...