Today, talks of climate action are on the rise, particularly considering the dire outcomes of the COP27, with loss and damage from climate change being the most pressing issues. With that in mind, achieving Goal 13 of the 2030 Agenda or SDGs calls for more urgent action as 2030 draws nearer.
In response to this issue, Dr. Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, Secretary General of UCLG ASPAC, discusses how nation states should not overlook how the accomplishment of one SDG goal could help with the completion of 16 other SDGs in a podcast interview with the Indonesian Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA). For instance, larger sustainable aspirations in all of the SDGs could be served by successful and inclusive climate action. In this podcast, Dr. Bernadia also discussed the founding and development of UCLG ASPAC, which empowers local governments to take the lead in achieving the SDGs. In reality, local governments—the entity closest to local communities—can help achieve over 60% of the 169 SDG targets because they are already in place. This is so that local governments can address and identify local requirements and resources for upcoming local project and policy implementation.
There are of course, challenges in reaching a consensus of mainstreaming national and regional priorities, and local governments may lack some technical capacity, for example, to identify potential stakeholders to partner with, and many more.
Dr. Bernadia discusses potential solutions to this, and how hope is not all lost as recently, more than 100 local and regional governments conducted and published their own Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR). VLRs have gained prominence to display local and regional governments’ progress in localising the Global Agenda.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/XrhWEzg6UFo
