Preface
We are delighted to introduce the report City-to-City Partnerships to Localise the Sustainable Development Goals, a joint initiative of the OECD and the European Commission, as a follow-up to our 2018 joint report on Reshaping Decentralised Development Co-Operation – The Key Role of Cities and Regions for the 2030 Agenda. This new publication defines the framework conditions for sustainable city-to-city partnerships and assesses the main challenges to their implementation. It takes stock of the diversity of existing frameworks to enhance city-to-city partnerships, proposes a new systemic monitoring and evaluation framework for city-to-city partnerships to localise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and suggests policy implications and ways forward to increase their effectiveness, efficiency and impact on territorialising the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
“Partnerships for the Goals” (SDG 17) and “Sustainable Cities and Communities” (SDG 11) are key vehicles to localise the 2030 Agenda, and development co-operation at large. Moreover, because of their key competencies in basic public service delivery (e.g. housing, infrastructure, land use, transport, and water), subnational actors have significant potential to help deliver on more than 65% of the SDGs. In OECD countries, they accounted for 54.6% of public investment and 36.6% of total public spending in 2020. In addition, the G20 Rome High-Level Principles on city-to-city partnerships for localising the SDGs (G20 Principles) emphasise the importance of co-operation between cities from developed and developing countries to reach global and universal goals.
This report provides valuable lessons to guide future engagement in the field of decentralised development co-operation, in particular to align city-to-city partnerships with the 2030 Agenda. In addition, through the proposed monitoring and evaluation framework, it offers an important tool to help analyse city-to-city partnerships and their contribution to the achievement of the SDGs. This study also aims to facilitate further local-national dialogue on decentralised development co-operation (DDC) by raising the profile of cities and regions engaged in partnerships, and providing guidance on the enabling environments set by national governments.
We are confident that the new framework to assess city-to-city partnerships presented in this report will help foster greater transparency and accountability for their contribution to localising SDGs 11 and 17, in particular, as well as the implementation of the G20 Principles. We invite stakeholders and governments at all levels to put into practice the guidance provided in the report to strengthen the effectiveness of their city-to-city partnerships.
Director, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities
Director, DG for International Partnerships, European Commission