Salt mining caravan in the Danakil depression, Ethiopia (photo: Andrea Moroni/Flickr.com)
The governor of the South Bohemia region and the mayor of Brno currently sit on the Council for Sustainable Development of the Czech government. LRGs are represented in France’s National Council for the Ecological Transition and in the National Council for Development and International Solidarity, which contribute to the Inter-Ministerial Committee for International Cooperation and Development (CICID). A similar body exists in Italy (National Council for Development Cooperation, or CNCS). In Togo, the Union of Local Governments (UCT) participates in the Stakeholder Commission of the National Development Plan, working on policy alignment with the SDGs. Whenever such spaces or the opportunity for institutional innovation are not available, many countries routinely rely on existing mechanisms of dialogue and cooperation – especially by strengthening the position of national ministries as hubs of coordination. The Ministry of Development and Planning of Benin has involved representatives of the national association of municipalities (ANCB) in its thematic working groups. In most Northern European countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, for example), LRGs and their associations have provided input, information and support via ordinary channels of communication with relevant national ministries – finances, international trade, public administration, foreign affairs or international development – that are in charge of the implementation process at the national level. Finally, a few countries are still defining what follow-up mechanisms will be used in this new phase of the process. Many of them agree, however, that the systematic involvement of local authorities will be an essential strategic component (e.g., Switzerland). Others acknowledge that LRGs are already ‘indirectly’ included in existing national follow-up mechanisms – for instance, in Argentina via “sectoral and federal entities” – and generally agree on the need to integrate LRGs even more in the future: according to the Georgian VNR, local governments will be “gradually included” in the implementation process, while in Morocco they will be engaged more actively in the processes of monitoring and evaluation.
5.3.2 Monitoring, reporting and review All countries in this report’s sample are making substantial efforts to better contribute to the reporting process and identify viable indicators for each country’s context. All countries, moreover, have assessed (or plan to) the availability of statistical resources and capacity (and the technical gaps they need to overcome) to measure the involvement of stakeholders in the implementation process and, thus, improve their ownership of the goals.
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