UN Conference on Sustainable Development
Opening Plenary 20 June 2012
Statement on behalf of Local Authorities Major Group delivered by Mr.
David Cadman, President of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentleman
I am very honoured to stand before you at the United Nations Conference on
Sustainable Development, the Rio+20 Summit, and to speak on behalf of the Local
Authorities Major Group
Ladies and Gentleman,
This century will see a global, unprecedented urbanization development.
Indeed, in the next 40 years, the projected expansion of urban capacity with 3
billion citizens is equivalent to that which has occurred over the last 4000 years
until now.
With such a development, we -as governmental leaders closest to our citizens- are
faced with unprecedented challenges to provide our citizens a sustainable quality of
life promoting cultural diversity and inclusion.
We are challenged to find the appropriate ways and means to substantially redesign
and transform our future life.
As governmental actors, we have proven to be effective drivers of sustainable
development to be incubators of innovation and scaled implementation, and to be
agents of change.
We started to address global problems -like climate change- with systemic solutions
as early as in 1993.
We have produced and enforced normative and legislative instruments that
promote sustainable practices and help greening our societies.
We, local and sub-national government, share with you the governance systems for
sustainability and we therefore need to seek complementarity and synergy in our
common goals for a sustainable development and ensure an integration of our
approaches for implementation.
Ladies and Gentleman,
We need to act now! And I therefore call upon you:
To Move towards a multi-level governance for sustainable development and define
together strategies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable
Development Goals;
To recognize local and sub-national governments as important governmental
stakeholders in the development of international legal frameworks for
sustainability;
To provide us as stakeholders with permanent and effective consultation
mechanisms as part of the United Nations procedures with a view to ensuring the
effective implementation of global agreements;
To provide us as governmental stakeholders with increased representation and
influence in international development cooperation processes including the UN
system;
To create additional national and international financial mechanisms for
sustainability and to enhance access to these from local and sub-national regional
authorities;
To provide support to sub-national authorities to develop disaster risk reduction and
a resilience planning;
And finally, to ensure that HABITAT III will reinvigorate the global commitment to
sustainable urbanization that should focus on the implementation of a “New Urban
Agenda including territorial cohesion and regionalization.
We look forward to work with you on these issues.
Thank you,
