In September 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been adopted. It includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to fight against poverty, injustice and climate change by 2030. These SDGs are characterized by their universality, which pledges all countries and territories to find common solutions to common challenges; their transversality, that requires an inter-sectoral action and multi-actor and multilevel partnerships; and thus, by the important role that territories play and will play, in their definition and implementation.
In this framework, the United Nations Development Programme, UN Habitat and the Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments for the Post-2015 Agenda and Habitat III, are promoting the elaboration process of a Toolbox for Implementing the SDGs at the local level. The elaboration of this toolbox is an open process, involving as many stakeholders as possible. Each partner contributes according to its resources, expertise and availability.
The economic and social inclusion, transversal topic of the SDGs, is an area of action that should be prioritized at the international level. The Assembly of French Departments works since two years and a half on an action-research initiative on social and economic inclusion in international cooperation among territories. This initiative aims at building shared responses to the common challenge of fighting vulnerability and exclusion that affect all territories.
In this context, UNDP and the AFD are glad to invite you to participate to a conference that they are organizing in the framework of the 7th Forum of the International Action of the French Local Authorities 2016, in France. The aim of this meeting is to highlight the added value of the SDGs for the implementation of cooperation initiatives for social and economic inclusion, and especially, to share existing and innovative tools and experiences related to social and economic inclusion in French and partners’ territories, that could be integrated into the Toolbox for the Implementation of the SDGs at the local level (localization).
We are sure that your experience and vision could bring a strategic added value to this meeting, which will aim at exchanging on existing tools at the local, national and international level that could accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.