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10/12/2024

Manizales: Foundation stone laid for the localization of the SDGs

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary, Part VI on the activities and effects of Connective Cities

Stakeholder workshop during the SDG week in Manizales | Photo: City of Manizales

For the Colombian city of Manizales, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2020 were more than just a list of targets for a better future. The city had just adopted its urban development plan "Manizales + Grande" and the administration now wanted to bring the SDGs into society and bring them to life in the everyday lives of the population. The SDGs are being implemented as global goals in municipalities around the world. So what could be more obvious than exchanging ideas with committed municipalities and giving each other tips and suggestions?

The virtual dialogue event "Strengthening local implementation of the SDGs through reporting and monitoring" in April 2021 - organized by Connective Cities in cooperation with the City of Bonn, among others - came at just the right time for Manizales. Almost 60 municipal practitioners from 19 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America shared their approaches and experiences in localizing the SDGs - an important milestone for Manizales.

Strategy with three pillars of SDG localization

The representatives from Manizales were full of energy after the dialog event and got straight down to work. Their strategy "Manizales on the way to the SDGs" is characterized in many parts by the exchange with colleagues from all over the world. It comprises three pillars: the organization of SDG Days, the implementation of citizen labs and the publication of a local report on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda (Voluntary Local Review, VLR). The SDG Days should serve to communicate about the SDGs, promote their implementation and convey the relevance of their localization. The citizen labs were an approach for involving different stakeholders and the VLR was intended to make local SDG commitment visible.

The trademark of the strategy is its broad focus. It includes the local economy, schools, science and research and citizens' initiatives. Because their commitment cannot be taken for granted, the strategy stipulates that these stakeholders receive recognition and visibility for their activities. For example, the companies involved have been accepted into the club of Agenda 2030 companies.

Citizens' laboratories

The activities were embedded in the city's Public Innovation Lab founded in 2020, an urban platform that encouraged many stakeholders to find solutions to the city's challenges by the end of 2022. The platform was divided into the areas of transparency, data, localization of the 2030 Agenda, citizen dialogues, sustainability research and evidence-based management. An important aim of the Public Innovation Lab was to improve relations between the local government and the population and to build trust. The city was willing to experiment with new approaches, including citizen dialogues.

At the Connective Cities dialog event, the representatives from Manizales learned that the Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences had already gained some experience in this area. Connective Cities subsequently facilitated three virtual workshops between the university and the city administrations of Bonn and Manizales, which included the presentation of a citizens' lab in which students from the university created a climate map of the city of Sankt Augustin with the help of citizens. Employees of the university provided suggestions on how different stakeholders from civil society and the private sector could be better involved in the implementation of the SDGs and reporting in Manizales. The innovation lab's approach in turn aroused great interest at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Together, Manizales and the university presented the activities of the innovation lab at the Citizen Science Forum.

Inventory with the help of a VLR

One focus of the virtual dialogue event was reporting on the localization of the 2030 Agenda. Almost 40 cities worldwide had already submitted a so-called " Voluntary Local Review" to the United Nations at that time, including the city of Bonn, co-host of the event. Manizales was inspired by these examples and immediately recognized the advantages of such a data-based report as a powerful tool for SDG communication that can make the progress of the municipality in implementing the SDGs highly visible.

Just two months later, Manizales signed the New York Voluntary Local Review Declaration and joined the international VLR community. In 2022, the city became the first Colombian municipality to publish its first VLR as a key step towards realizing the "Manizales 2030 SDGs" vision. "It was important for us to incorporate the opinions of the population into the report," says Oscar Andrés Jiménez, who was responsible for localizing the SDGs and for the Public Innovation Lab at the city at the time. The second VLR followed a year later. He emphasized that the localization of the SDGs is a task for society as a whole and also affects the economy, culture, civil society, research and education, and presented the initiatives within the framework of "Manizales on the way to the SDGs".

SDG Days

The city administration of Manizales also quickly implemented the second inspiration they took away from the dialog event. The representatives of the Colombian city were enthusiastic about the reports on the Bonn SDG Week. Every year in September, the city is all about the SDGs - a street is decorated in SDG colors, an SDG wheel of fortune invites people to get informed and there are numerous events, workshops, games and also an SDG lunch.

An SDG week was held in Manizales in mid-2021 and was officially opened by the mayor at the time. The aim was to raise awareness of the SDGs among the population. As Manizales is a university city, the focus was on students as a special target group. During the week, a traditional card game, now adapted to the SDGs, was used - an idea that in turn met with great interest in Bonn. The week was not a purely municipal event. Civil society, business and educational institutions all contributed to its success.

The second SDG Days in October 2022 were also a great success - with SDG symbols clearly visible in public spaces, four scientific forums and many activities, they reached around 4,000 citizens. The event also received a lot of national and international media attention.

Expansion of the network

The representatives from Manizales not only kept in touch with their colleagues in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg district after the dialog event. They also exchanged ideas with other Latin American cities such as Rosario and Mar del Plata in Argentina, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, La Paz in Bolivia and Antigua in Guatemala. In June 2022, they met their partners from Germany and other European cities at a panel of the World Urban Forum - again only virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

What happens next

Due to political changes, the localization of the SDGs is currently not a priority of the city of Manizales. The activities for the Agenda 2030 have been discontinued for the time being. In the future, however, the city can rely on a build a strong foundation for the localization of the SDGs. Pilot projects have shown how citizens can contribute to successful SDG implementation. The population and many key stakeholders such as research, the private sector and civil society have been sensitized and now more people than ever know how important the 17 SDGs are - for citizens, for the city and for the entire planet. That’s a big win.

 

How Manizales benefited from the exchange of expertise:
  • Receive quickly implementable suggestions for the organization of SDG Days and for the creation of a VLR from international colleagues
  • Integration into an international network for sustainability reporting
  • learned from the experience of Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences at workshops on citizen labs
  • Expanding the local basis for implementing the 2030 Agenda

Author:
Connective Cities


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