A practical guide to legal and financial levers
N O 3
Border cities and climate change
Establish a crossborder local development strategy C
ross-border regions are living areas in which populations often share the same cultural and linguistic features, as well as specific needs for territorial development, which is particularly the case when a capital city is far from the border. Some of these specific needs are accessibility to basic services like health and education/training, facilitating trade in cross-border markets, territorial development and cross-border transport.
Mobilising local political and technical stakeholders to create partnerships around a cross-border territorial project is essential for concerted territorial development that does not negatively impact neighbouring countries (ex. flood control hydraulic structures on the Niger River) and that take into account population flows around infrastructure (markets and related services, health centres, etc.). Once contact has been established between local authorities on both sides of the border around a joint project (ex. the project between Dori and Téra around access to water and sanitation infrastructures), co-operation sustainability is based on the development of a cross-border strategy for local development and integrated territorial development. This type of approach is supported, inter alia,by UEMOA which has funded studies to support the drafting of Integrated Transboundary Development Schemes (ICDP/SATI) in several pilot zones.
BORDER CITIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
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PRACTICAL GUIDE N O 3 JULY 2020 © SWAC/OECD