Capacity of Local and Regional Governments to Implement the New Urban Agenda? Decentralisation, Local Autonomy and Municipal Finances

The rapid urbanisation process has a direct impact on sustainable urban development and the capacity of local governments to deal with rising global challenges. Local governments must have access to adequate funding to deliver their mandates. Although local and regional governments (LRGs) are responsible for most public investments, they only receive a low share of devolved national resources. National policies should therefore facilitate adequate access to funding for subnational governments.
The proposed event has as its main objective to give a comprehensive vision on the capacities in terms of finance and competences of LRGs to design and implement adapted measures in favour of sustainable development on their territories. The concept of Municipal Finances and the role that LRGs can play therein will be further explored. The success in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda will closely depend on the establishment of an enabling environment for local public investments and the decentralization of related competences.
In order to address the challenges, LRGs support the need for further discussion on the links between the recent international agreements ("Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030", Addis Ababa Action Agenda, 2030 Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change) and the capacity of subnational governments to implement them at local level. This reflection is related to the principles of decentralization, local autonomy and effective multi-level governance.
A perspective on innovative forms of financing for sustainable urban development will be given: energy performance contracting, citizen-based funding models (crowdfunding platforms), revolving loan funds and green municipal bonds are examples of solutions that have often proven to be successful. In addition, technical support is highly needed in order to help design the appropriate financial schemes for urban areas.
Finally, capacity-building and national and international networking are crucial elements to ensure an adequate development and strengthening of LRGs in their ability to design, implement and monitor the new urban agenda.