SDGs Blog: The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs - Taking on global ambition as a Local Pathways Fellow
Tags: Sdsn Youth, Urbanization, Sdgs, Sustainable Development, Cities

SDGs Blog: The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs - Taking on global ambition as a Local Pathways Fellow UN-MGCY Follow Aug 7, 2017 · 4 min read

by: Clinton Moore

“We need 21st century ideas for 21st century challenges.”

“Business as usual will not deliver great cities.”

“Urbanisation as a process does not guarantee economic growth.”

“We need to be provocative and transformational.”

The above quotes are a sample of thoughts, jotted down in my notebook, from world and local leaders that I have heard two months into the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) Youth Local Pathways Fellowship. They point to some of the great human and development challenges of our time. They point to a common theme — we need creativity and boldness at the junction at which we stand.

The journey so far as a Local Pathways Fellow has been thoroughly rewarding. We are 60 young people from 52 cities around the world, driven by visions of sustainable, inspirational, fair, and profound positive change for humanity. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are not just our agenda to champion, but everybody’s.

Two months in as a Fellow, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Implementing the New Urban Agenda Conference in Melbourne in May 2017. This was a conference and an agenda for everybody, as demonstrated by a session led by young people and people who have experienced homelessness. Despite our differences in experiencing the city, there were clear consistent themes that emerged in that session. Housing and transport were key concerns, and other discussions centred on the “right to the city” tenet. The New Urban Agenda has begun to stimulate renewed, cross-sector discussion on the Melbourne we want.

Melbourne’s success as a liveable and prosperous city has drawn unprecedented levels of growth and investment, and brought to life pressing questions on our urban character, form and fabric. The Resilient Melbourne Strategy, for example, points to the challenges of population growth, social cohesion, climate change, and inequality. Melbourne is experienced very differently by its people, depending on their location, access to quality jobs and services, and proximity to reliable public transport.

So with 17 SDGs, 169 targets, and 12 months before me as a Local Pathways Fellow, what is my rallying cry? I am explicit in my passion for SDG 11, to make our cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. My life path to date has criss-crossed the social, environmental, cultural, and spatial dimensions of many cities in Australia and Asia. Having lived in places that colour the seemingly wholesome tapestry of ‘urban’ so very differently, we face tremendous challenges in providing opportunity and tempering urban consumerism while yet cultivating sustainable and fair urban growth. I am now based in Melbourne, but I look upon my time in Manila and Ulaanbaatar with great fondness. For a tragic urbanist like me, living in modern Ulaanbaatar turns some of the concepts we learn about “cities” upside down. Heading out to the ger districts and spending time with a Mongolian family, I saw first-hand the challenges that Mongolian authorities have in managing spatial growth and providing opportunities, particularly for young people, in a context where mass urbanism is relatively new.

New apartments rise to meet the steppe in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

All three cities (Melbourne, Manila and Ulaanbaatar) are indeed experiencing rapid growth. Whilst the conditions of growth may be different, they can all look to Goal 11 and its targets as key rallying points of inquiry, action, and partnership. Needless to say, that cities worldwide should be strengthening their appetite for SDG localisation plans and education.

Increasingly, I have been drawn to the body of work around resilience in our cities. How are our institutions and communities prepared for the “order, disorder, and re-order” of modern life, as put by theologian Richard Rohr? Resilience in cities may generally be understood as the ability to recover from disaster or unexpected events, while still addressing ongoing stresses such as social inequality.

The Local Pathways Fellowship is seeking to build up and enhance a body of knowledge and practice on the SDGs making; it is a show of strength and dynamism from young people around the world. We know that future generations will inherit the cities, lands, oceans, and communities that emerge from the SDGs and as such are considering how to leave them the best inheritance possible.

The 2030 Agenda is necessarily ambitious and stirring. Linking local movements with the broader global story is what makes programs such as the Local Pathways Fellowship so transformative. The SDGs are not just a United Nations aspiration, but about the uplifting of the human and environmental condition for all of us. The SDGs are a global response to the challenges of our time. We are all in this together.

Clinton Moore is an inaugural SDSN Youth Local Pathways Fellow.

Skyline growth in Melbourne, Australia

References

Center for Action and Contemplation, 2016. Order, disorder, Reorder. Available at: https://cac.org/order-disorder-reorder-2016-02-23/

Resilient Melbourne Strategy, 2016. Available at: http://resilientmelbourne.com.au/strategy/

SDSN Youth, 2017. Meet the fellows. Available at: http://localpathways.org/fellows

United Nations, 2017. Sustainable Development Goal 11. Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg11