The commitments and processes initiated with LA21 in Granollers serve as a first pilot example in Barcelona province for integrating local policies in the local Agenda 2030
Description
Since the approval of the last Local Agenda 21 (2009), Granollers has developed different plans and instruments with their own actions and monitoring systems (for instance the SEAP, the SUMP,...) but not enough resources to systematically monitor them separately. To track city’s sustainability and avoid the scattered information, the SDGs unify and give a homogeneous common language for local organizations and their different departments, and for other local authorities. It becomes an essential framework to effectively address urban paradigms and challenges towards sustainability and to bring together international terminology for local organizations all over the world and their different departments.
The objectives of the project are:<br />
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1-Transition from Local Agenda 21 and other municipal environmental sustainability plans (SUMP, SEAP, Air Quality Plan ...) to the new Agenda 2030. The practice includes the closure of L A21 (2009-2018) within the framework of the SDGs, and the definition of a new path with tracking milestones and indicators integrated among different local and global public policies. The premise in the process is to integrate resources between services and departments for the monitoring and management of the A2030.<br />
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2-Breaking down silos at work, to obtain an interdepartmental municipal coordination and a multilevel coordination between administrations. The systematization of a pilot methodology helps other services and other municipalities towards their A2030. This pilot practice focus especially on the 8 goals indicated above, linked to the A21L (2009-2018).<br />
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2.1Internally, for the transition of Local Agenda 21 (2009- 2019) towards the A2030, the cross-sectional approach between services is addressed jointly with the Environment and Green Area Service, from the Area of Territory and City, and the Planning and Strategic Projects service.<br />
2.2 Coordination between administrations is sought with the joint work with the Diputació de Barcelona: Granollers is the first municipality that has received simultaneous support from the Provincial Council from two different sections: from the Department of Territory and Sustainability and from the department of International Relations of the Area of Attention to People. The Technical Office of Climate Change and Sustainability offers technical support for the transition of the A21L to the A2030, while from the Department of International Relations the support is focus on citizen and internal communication campaigns<br />
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3-Design the Sustainable Development Observatory with indicators organized within the common frame of SDG for local strategic planning. The Observatory maximizes the utility of monitoring for decision making and helps to a better knowledge of Granollers local development. The follow-up of local sustainability, basically environmental, has been in previous political program (Action 203, Actions 355-358) and in the current local government program which includes:<br />
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3.1The calculation and periodically update of environmental indicators, with an annual report, to homogenize the indicator system between cities and multilevel administrations (Action 53).<br />
3.2Inform citizens about local environment and sustainability evolution through annual environmental reports (Action 54).<br />
3.3 Incorporate local sustainability into municipal management and strategic planning documents in Granollers (Action 55).<br />
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4-Generate a replicable methodology for other municipalities of the province and for other municipal services/departments to implement the A2030.<br />
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5-Develop a communication plan of the A2030 in a coordinated way with the local municipal services and the Diputació de Barcelona.
1.. Informative sessions
2. Three training workshop for 25 technicians from different services
3. Participation in the “Think Europe” seminars
4. Cycle of conferences "Sustainable cities to transform the world" to promote citizens awareness of the city challenges and how to deal with them.
The participation is feasible through many citizen participatory organisms that foresee direct input for local decision-making processes. Citizens are the final beneficiaries
The first Environmental Action Plan of Granollers (1999), according to the United Nations Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992), materialized the commitment of the city not only with the Aalborg Charter (1994) but also with the other authorities that in Manresa (1997) constituted the Network of Cities and Towns for Sustainability (1997). On the other hand, the first Municipal Strategic Plan (2000) incorporated lines of improvement in environmental city management to transform it into a quality city, and also recognized the need for citizen participation and education, both aspects closely linked to Local Agenda 21 (LA21). Coordination between the city's strategic plan and the LA21 has so far, been centred with the monitoring of city indicators
Ten years after the first environmental action plan, a new local agenda 21(LA21) defined the route for the next 10 years, until 2019. Over the years, in addition, different policy sector planning instruments have been developed, which, in more detail, establish environmental strategy actions.Thus, among others:
• the Sustainable urban mobility plan, SUMP (2009-2015) and (2018-2024),
• Air quality action plans: Granollers (2011), Intermunicipal for the Vallès Oriental region- (2016),
• the Sustainable energy action plan, SEAP (2009), and the SECAP (2016),
• Mapping and noise action plans for acoustic pollution (2011, 2017,2018),
• Protection of natural heritage (2005) and natural landscape guidelines (2012),
• Urban Plan (2006)and housing plan (2018) or the Waste prevention plan (2019)
A methodology has been conceived to align the SDGs on a municipality scale, and with respect to LA21
1)Analysis of LA21 and other plans related to SDGs . Qualitative analysis of the degree of alignment, materiality and detection of deficiencies. Cross analysis between milestones.
2)Closure of LA21 to audit objectives, actions and indicators and settle the approach, agenda and execution with meetings with technicians (internal and external) and politicians (11/30/2018), (12/14/2018). Assessment of the degree of implementation of each action, and degree of accomplishment (quantitative or qualitative) of LA21 indicators.
3)First set of actions in A2030 draft: Review and evaluation of milestones and actions to achieve them moving from LA21 and other plans towards each related SDG’ milestone.
4)Arrangement of a Sustainable Development Observatory with SDGs’ common framework. The tracking of the milestones will be done jointly for both: to check the degree of execution of programmed actions and to check city’s evolution towards global SDG of quality, efficiency and environmental resilience.
5)A2030 Communication plan to reach members of the organization, citizens and other local authorities through a website www.granollers.cat/SDG and a Sharepoint where information is shared with different groups (task force).
The innovative partnerships include the involvement of departments, citizens and other local authorities in workshops and meetings. Besides the non profit associations (bikers, hikers,...) Granollers is an active Member of the Commission of International Relations (FEMP http://www.femp.es/) ,of the UCLG World Council, and of the network of cities and towns towards sustainability(Barcelona) as well as other international networks (ICLEI, Office NNUU, European Projects ...).
a-With a new integrated system to establish actions and indicators which combines the daily management and the long term planning.
b- With a common framework shared by other administrations and countries addressed to involve citizens in the future of the city .
c- With public servants and politicians informed and aware of the link between their work with this international vision
d- With a unified structure to organize, simplify the communication and coordinate the participation, the internal and external information from the administrations to the citizens, to their employees and towards other acting agents.
Results:
1-Identification of the city's strategic SDG and the associated actions to shift from the LA21 to the A2030:
a-Nine different plans of the municipality have been reviewed
b-240 indicators derived from all the plans are aligned with the SDG but will be reduce in number to achieve a synthetic and practical system that helps to make decisions.
2-Periodic alignment of the local government program with the city's strategic SDG. With several meetings with the government team, the management committee and service directors.
3-Identification of the key persons and involvement in the decision-making process:
a 42 municipal workers (21 men and 21 women) took part of the informative SDG workshops held.
b-Meetings and conferences for citizens
c-Website dedicated to the whole process. The amount of citizen documentation contributions and downloads (usually interactions) will be quantified to determine by the year 2020 the population that has interacted in the project
4-Establishment of an observatory monitoring the degree of execution of actions programmed and the evolution of the city towards the SDGs related to quality, efficiency and environmental resilience.
The solution we have found to overcome the complexity when it comes to aligning so many plans, strategies, actions and indicators that so far carried out several departments and encompassed them in a common project that is fully transverse is:
a)To start with the same methodology of the previous LA21 and reinforce it with awareness actions.
b)The design of a reference group to advise the different departments about SDG’ planning, implementation and evaluation
c)Keep working in a multilevel governance -horizontal and vertical- with other local administrations, such as Diputació de Barcelona
To overcome the risk of keeping the process unrelated to the local and global social priorities:
a)A significant role was given to the Diputació de Barcelona (multilevel governance) - horizontal and vertical - and the municipalities coalescing in the conurbation.
b)Identifying and selecting the KPI (key performance indicators). for tracking the achievement of SDG and include indicators commonly accepted such as the ones in"The SDG in 100 Spanish cities"
c)The impacts on the most vulnerable people are taken into account and their participation will be sought directly
d)Participatory adaptation of SDG with citizens and non profit organizations
1. The commitment of Barcelona Provincial Council with the localization of SDGs and the support (technical and economic) that offers from various departments.
2. A more than 20 years’ experience of the municipality in developing and implementing Agenda21 and other actions related with sustainable development carried out by the city council. Granollers has always been committed and active with international agendas, from Local Agenda 21 to the current Agenda 2030.
3. The experience in governance and local participation. In addition to the development of participative budgets, in Granollers we are also encouraging governance through different municipal Councils that take part in the transition project from Local Agenda 21 to Agenda 2030. A wide range of citizen participation is covered: municipal entities, associations and political groups.
4. High participation and social involvement in the activities of the city (City festival, Half Marathon, City of Peace, etc.). The city has a cultural participatory system.
5. There is continuous training to internally raise awareness among the workers and municipal services.
6. There is political leadership to make progress on Agenda 2030, an agenda designed for people, where local and regional governments are fundamental. It is an opportunity to work for the well-being of people and the planet as it is done, but framed in a global action plan to improve the world.
7. It is a process approved by social and citizen consensus, so once approved there will not be changes or steps back
Constraints
1. Difficulty to find models or good practices to localize SDGs at municipal scale.
2. Looking at the process as an added workload instead of considering it an easier and faster way to communicate internally and externally with a common language.
3. There is a high segmentation of municipal sectorial policies.
Innovation
To use Agenda 21 as a precedent and pilot action to develop the Agenda 2030 and to take advantage of the common points between the two Agendas in terms of fields of action as well as regarding the common origin as both have been promoted by the United Nations with the aim to be transferred at municipal scale and to become a common framework for action in supralocal networks and associations.
The SDGs are not designed for local scale; therefore an agreed adaptation between administrations is essential.
To work together between the two departments of the local organization and the provincial organization and to break administrative barriers to share work and advance more consensually on the way forward.
The actions and indicators deal with the promotion of local organic farming (SGD2) or the efficient and sustainable management of water (SDG6) and energy (SDG7, SDG9) in all sectors (residential, industrial, services and municipal). The SDG11 will be addressed with actions to improve the local air quality that can be reached with an increase in low carbon transport and a reduction in emissions, as well as with accessible and quality green spaces. Urban resilience is also part of SDG11, it will be guaranteed through actions that deal with urban vulnerability. Recycling and recovery of waste (SDG12) is also addressed in all sectors (residential, industrial, services and municipal), such as the co-responsibility and enjoyment of natural peri-urban areas (protected or not) and artificial green areas and urban trees.
Granollers continues working and participating on international projects and national, regional and municipal networks (SDG17).
Replicability
We hope that the methodology implemented in Granollers and the lessons learned will be replicable in other municipalities with similar characteristics. This can boost SDG and Agenda 2030, as it is difficult to access SDG localization methodologies based on practical experiences.
The collaboration and support of Barcelona Provincial Council in this process guarantees promoting the replicability of the process and including this experience in the database of United Nations on good practices in SDG implementation which can help other interested municipalities.
Cost / benefit
One of the characteristics of the development of Agenda 2030 is that it integrates the actions of the various plans and departments in a single document. Therefore, while executing the actions, the cost/benefit ratio will be greater because the action plan is transversal and integrative.The greatest benefit is being able to make progress towards a city that is continuously improving its quality of life and therefore the health and well-being of its citizens
Defining and moving forward on Agenda 2030 through the closing and transition of local Agenda 21 allows making progress on sustainability. In fact Agenda 21 was the main instrument that began to design the local route towards sustainability. There are dynamics of transversal work and follow-up of desired objectives very deeply rooted in the Local Agenda 21 that will facilitate the work. The City Council of Granollers is committed to align local political actions with Agenda 2030 and SDG, and this will be the pilot embedding that will allow consensus and storytelling.<br />
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With the support offered by Barcelona Provincial Council, Granollers has located and aligned SDG in the transversal plans linked to the sustainability of the planet and people. The established process of SDG alignment allows to value all the previous work carried out by the municipality in the progress towards sustainable development (plans, strategies, actions, etc.). In addition, the final result is a more ambitious local strategy for sustainable development, which allows us to go beyond the scope of the traditional Agenda 21, opening the way to incorporate the five main areas of SDG action: People, prosperity, planet, peace and partnerships.<br />
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Specifically, the process developed has allowed in a single common global language:<br />
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- To have a transversal and integral local sustainable development action plan focused on planet and people<br />
- To involve the different departments and structures of the City Council in a common sustainable development project that is a first step to reach global strategic city planning.<br />
- To have an Observatory of sustainability indicators that will allow tracking the targets and supporting municipal management and communication with citizens regarding Granollers progress on quality, efficiency and environmental resilience.<br />
- To create a replicable methodology to align SDG at municipal scale using local Agenda 21 as a pilot case.<br />
- To develop a communication plan for citizens to participate in SDG implementation process and for externally sharing work documents and articles of interest with working groups.<br />
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It has been proved essential; in order to continuously improve a process like this, the involvement of the different local services and associations, as well as to share together with Barcelona Provincial Council the results in networks such as the xarxa de ciutats i pobles cap a la sostenibilitat, CGLU, FEMP and other International networks.
Municipal Strategic Plan (2000)(2010)
Cycle of conferences "Sustainable cities to transform the world" to promote citizens awareness of the city challenges and how to deal with them.
http://wp.granollers.cat/iiplaestrategic/tancament/
Local agenda 21 in Granollers
First Environmental Action Plan of Granollers (20 April 1999), http://intranet.granollers.cat/databases/agenda21/ag21bloc.nsf/dx/Agend…
Agenda 21 Local
http://granollers.cat/node/51194/
Diputació de Barcelona
https://www.diba.cat/es/web/SDG/granollers
https://www.diba.cat/documents/228621/146921844/20180607_Resum+executiu…
Local News
http://el9nou.cat/valles-oriental/opinio/lagenda-2030-a-granollers/
SDGS & Targets
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Marta Chillida Munguet, Environmental sustainability technician