In the context of the United Nation's High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, the LRG Forum took place to discuss the post-COVID-19 panorama. It was comprised of three different online panels regarding Universal Basic Services, Multilevel Territorial Governance and Sustainable Financing, and Building Back Better. Mayor Claudia López was invited to talk about the Bogotá case in the Multilevel Territorial Governance panel together with worldwide policymakers and experts.
Participants discussed different perspectives on sustainable development under the moderation of Haoliang Xu, director of the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, UNDP.
There was an overall consensus about the necessity to uphold the Commitments on Climate Change adopted in the Paris Agreement as well as a call to pursue a more ambitious agenda during the next UN Convention on Climate Change that will be held the next year in Glasgow, Scotland.
Contenidos relacionados
Consequently, Mayor López celebrated that green agendas were gaining higher relevance among local governments. For example, Bogotá recently approved a Development Plan that includes an Environmental Contract aiming institutional and social reforms to mitigate the climate crisis. This plan contemplates the reduction of greenhouse emissions to improve air quality, a restoration of the city´s main ecological structure and the construction of a new multimodal system of transportation based on clean energies. These reforms will be highly relevant in the context of recovery after the pandemic.
On the other hand, the panel debated the role of local governments in multilateralism, and on the challenges of coordinating actions between local and national governments during the COVID-19 crisis
During the closing ceremony of the LRG Forum, one of the main conclusions of the discussions was the importance of configuring new normality in the post-COVID-19 era based on climate-related actions that promote wealth through green economies. Also, different parties agreed that new financial recovery programs must be directed towards the most affected countries by the pandemic.
