Global Campaign on Urban Governance

Report of Eighth Steering Group Meeting

14th September 2004, Barcelona

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 8th Steering Group Meeting was held in conjunction with the second World Urban Forum in Barcelona. As the Steering Group had previously met just three months ago, no “formal” progress report was circulated. The meeting focused on specific areas where partnerships could be built amongst various Steering Group members and the Campaign secretariat at UN-HABITAT, including national campaigns, promotion of various tools produced by the Campaign, and the dissemination and application of the Urban Governance Index. The participation of the UCLG Secretary-General helped to take the discussions on UCLG/UN-HABITAT collaboration forward in a constructive manner.

The second half of the Steering Group Meeting was dedicated to a discussion on the Localising MDGs proposal. The group was expanded to include members of the Programme Review Committee of the Urban Management Programme, including Sida and SDC. This was an attempt to open up the discussion on Localising MDGs to the partners of the Governance Campaign, and to discuss possible cooperation in this area.

OPENING REMARKS

  1. The Chair welcomed all participants and requested participants to introduce themselves.
  2. On behalf of the Urban Governance Campaign secretariat, Mohamed Halfani also welcomed the SG members. He also briefed the group on the Agenda of the meeting.
  3. The Minutes of the Seventh Steering Group Meeting were accepted without any amendment.

PRESENTATION OF THE UN-HABITAT/UCLG FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT

  1. Elisabeth Gateau, the Secretary-General of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) made a brief presentation of the Framework Agreement between UCLG and UN-HABITAT, which has a number of significant implications for the Governance Campaign. She reiterated UCLG’s commitment to chair the Steering Group and strengthen links with other partners, such as the Huairou Commission. UCLG is also keen to play an active part in the Localising MDGs initiative, as the local authorities have an important role in implementing concrete measures to achieve the MDGs. Ms. Gateau also elaborated on the proposal to establish GOLD – the Global Observatory on Local Democracy and decentralisation – which would undertake the task of collecting and analysing information and building a body of knowledge on the state of local authorities across the world.

CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES UPDATE AND PARTNERS’ FEEDBACK

National Campaigns

  1. The Secretariat briefed the group on the status of national campaigns in different regions. Campaigns are being launched in Senegal, Morocco and Burkina Faso this year, with Cuba and Uganda scheduled for early 2005. Other national campaigns in the pipeline are Mexico, Peru and Colombia in Latin America; and Fiji and Indonesia in the Asia and Pacific region. The substantive elements of selected Campaigns, such as Morocco (focusing on Cities Without Slums) and Cuba (emphasising the strengthening of local authorities’ capacities for decentralised urban planning), were highlighted. In Colombia and Peru, the governance and secure tenure Campaigns have split after a joint start.
  2. Mohamed Soumaré, representative of ENDA, a key civil society partner in the Senegal Campaigns, shared some insights on the preparatory process of national Campaigns. He explained that the process in Senegal had been long and intensive, with a lead role played by the National Habitat Committee. He emphasised the importance of strong and consistent commitment of all partners, in order to make the national campaigns successful.
  3. Carl Wright of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum expressed an interest in the Uganda Campaign launch. He also requested that the launch dates be set in such a manner to avoid a clash with the CLGF Conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, scheduled for 14-17 March 2005.
  4. Jan Peterson of the Huairou Commission pointed out that the second “Women and Safety” meeting was to be held in Bogota and that this could potentially feed into the national campaign in Colombia.

Urban Governance Index

  1. The Secretariat informed the group about the extremely successful networking event on “Measuring Urban Governance”, which was organised the previous day (13th September) at WUF. Different approaches on measuring the quality of urban governance and municipal performance were shared and both demand and supply perspectives presented.
  2. The salient features of the “Conceptual Foundation and Field Test Report,” which is the latest document to be produced on the Urban Governance Index (UGI), were also shared with the Steering Group. There is great demand for urban governance indicators, but the process has shown that selecting summary measures for the quality of urban governance is not only a complex but also a controversial task. Partners’ views were solicited on how best to disseminate and apply the UGI. The possibilities of national application – such as being initiated in Somalia and Zimbabwe – were also discussed.
  3. A key question raised on the UGI pertained to the relationship between the Index and the Localising MDGs initiative. It was explained that as the Index wishes to demonstrate that process improvement has a significant impact on outcomes, any attempt to monitor the MDGs at the local level must also monitor governance processes. Thus the Index will undoubtedly have an important role in the Localising MDGs initiative. This view was reinforced by Emilia Saiz of UCLG, who stated that there is a need to make local actors understand that there is a link between improving governance and achieving the MDGs. To this end, the work of GOLD will build further on the Urban Governance Index.
  4. A question on gender-disaggregated indicators was also raised during the discussion. The Secretariat clarified that as much as possible gender disaggregation was applied to the “single data” indicators. However, it was not possible to do this for all indicators, including many “binary data” indicators, which measures the presence of selected governance procedures and processes. The Campaign Secretariat invited the Huairou Commission to start customising and applying the Urban Governance Index in its various country/city-level activities. Jonas Rabinovitch also indicated that UNDP’s Oslo Governance Centre (OGC) was working on developing governance indicators with an explicit gender focus, and encouraged the Huairou Commission to make contact with OGC.
  5. Another issue that received much attention during the discussion was the use of the findings of the “Conceptual Foundation and Field Test Report.” The report includes data from 24 cities and has some controversial findings. However, it should be noted that the city data presented in the report is primarily for tool development purposes and should not be used to make comparisons, nor for any further dissemination and publication. The results will be useful for comparisons once data is collected from a larger sample of cities and when principal component analysis is applied to establish the final selection of indicators. An important and constructive suggestion on the use of the Index was its application as a dynamic tool. Carl Wright of CLGF pointed out that if the Index was to be used as a tool to reward good behaviour, such a reward must not be based on a snapshot at any one point in time, but for the degree of change/improvement in the Index figures over a given time period. It was also proposed that a conscious attempt must be made to move the focus away from the aggregate figure to the “governance profile” of a city based on sub-indices, which can then be used to reinforce its strengths and address its weaknesses through capacity-building and other forms of support.
  6. Konrad Otto-Zimmermann of ICLEI shared with the group the experience of LASALA – Local Authorities’ Self-Assessment of Local Agenda 21– which is a web-based tool available in 18 languages to enable local authorities to self-evaluate their sustainable development processes. This could be explored as one of the models for global dissemination of the UGI.
  7. The discussion concluded with an agreement that the Index must be promoted as a self-explanatory, useful and easily implementable tool for local authorities. Cities must be convinced rather than coerced to use this tool, with full knowledge of all its implications. The idea of the Good Governance Hallmark Award was also discussed briefly.

Good Urban Governance Toolkits

  1. The group was informed about the publication of the latest Toolkit in the series, titled “Local to Local Dialogue: A Grassroots Women’s Perspective on Good Governance”. This toolkit has been produced jointly by UN-HABITAT and the Huairou Commission. Huairou Commission and UCLG shared their joint plans to disseminate and apply the Toolkit over the next few months, through a series of GWIAs (Grassroots Women’s International Academies) and other efforts. It was also suggested that local-local dialogues be used as a key step in the preparatory process of national campaigns.

Research Agenda

  1. Carole Rakodi of N-AERUS pointed out that the Campaign needed to revisit its research agenda. A few research priorities had been identified in the early stages of the Campaign but these have now been sidelined in favour of toolkits, the Index and other products. She also emphasised the importance of undertaking systemic monitoring of how the Toolkits and Index work in different contexts. The Secretariat reported that efforts to secure direct funding from the EU’s Directorate General for Research had proven so far unsuccessful. However, it was announced that UN-HABITAT and EU’s DG Research were launching a joint booklet at WUF in Barcelona promoting priority areas for Urban Research, including on urban governance topics. The Secretariat also reported that a research initiative on “Urban Policies and Practices Addressing International Migration”, which is being implemented in collaboration with the University of Venice, had received bilateral funding, and its interim results were presented at WUF in Barcelona.

Other initiatives and ideas

  1. Avi Rabinovitch, a representative of the Union of Local Authorities in Israel, requested the Campaign to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian city dialogues for peace.

CAMPAIGN EVALUATION AND FUTURE OF THE STEERING GROUP

  1. The Secretariat informed the Steering Group that the joint evaluation of the two Campaigns would be initiated soon, and that the future structure, composition and role of the Steering Group would be discussed in the context of the evaluation results.

LOCALISING MDGs

  1. Dinesh Mehta briefly explained the background of the “Urban Millennium Partnership: Localising MDGs” initiative. He informed the group that while the three main promoters of the Partnership are UN-HABITAT, UNDP and UCLG, the objective of discussing it within the Campaign Steering Group meeting is to make it more inclusive. He also emphasised that national campaigns and action plans need to be linked to MDG targets, and that the Localising MDGs initiative can play an important role in this regard.
  2. Emilia Saiz of UCLG pointed out that this is just the beginning of the initiative, and that local authorities will need long and sustained support to achieve the MDGs. Pelle Persson, the representative of Sida, emphasised that the MDGs are a powerful tool, but need to be unpacked and brought down to the local level to make a difference. He also stated that the use of UMP resources and networks of anchoring and partner institutions would be crucial to the success of the new initiative.
  3. Steering group members raised a number of pertinent issues regarding the linkages of the new initiative with their own activities. ICLEI pointed out that it is an association of 465 cities and countries, mandated to run programmes related to some of the MDGs, and expressed an interest in linking their activities to the new initiative. Sri Sofjan of the Huairou Commission suggested that there needs to be a space for other regional partners as well, in this initiative.
  4. Car Wright of CLGF stressed for a greater role of local authorities within the context of localisation of budgets and decision-making powers of international institutions and donor agencies. Jonas Rabinovitch of UNDP explained that MDGs are very much a part of UNDAF processes in most countries.
  5. Summarising the discussion, Paul Taylor stated that the different views expressed by partners would be reflected in the next iteration of the Project Document. He also invited all the Steering group members to attend the “launch” of the partnership, scheduled in the afternoon of the same day.

NEXT MEETING

  1. No firm date was set for the next meeting of the Steering Group.
  2. The Chair and the Campaign Secretariat thanked all members for their active participation in the Meeting.

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