Mayors ‘confess’ to Pope Francis

For the first time in history, the Pope has brought mayors from all over the world together at the Vatican, at a workshop called “Modern Slavery and Climate Change: the Commitment of the Cities”. This was a welcome addition to the ongoing work of global local and regional governments, which have a longstanding track record of collaborating internationally to ensure a sustainable future for all.

The gathering of over 60 mayors came in the wake of the publication of Pope Francis’ second encyclical, Laudato si’. In the text, subtitled ‘on care for our common home’, the Pope gave the world some straight talk about the global environmental, social and economic agendas. There was no beating around the bush, no euphemisms; just plain language and clear moral messages that mayors and ordinary people can understand.

I have attended hundreds of meetings of mayors all over the world over the last 30 years and, believe me, the debates that followed were some of the most profound and sincere that I have ever seen. Local leaders of cities from Africa to America, Europe to Asia, all confessed their concerns and hopes regarding the world’s most pressing social, economic, political and  environmental issues.

Someone asked me if the mayors were all left-wing. No, I replied, they were confessing their challenges, whether they were of the right, left or center. They are mayors of all the people in their cities, no matter what their political beliefs and they have to try to find practical solutions to the real daily problems of their citizens. Another thing I find funny at this kind of event is when people refer to “UCLG mayors”. Mayors DO NOT belong to one international organization or the other.They belong to their citizens!

The advantage of discussing seemingly unrelated issues such as modern slavery and climate change is that it opens up the opportunity to consider integrated policies that tackle these issues in a holistic way. This is the way that the best local leaders govern on the ground. By doing this they can get beyond false dichotomies such as “growth or equality”, “capitalism or sharing economies”, “welfare state or partner state”, “economic development or environmental sustainability”, “center or periphery”, “global or local”.

Pope Francis posed the question of why he had invited mayors to come together at the Vatican. His answer was that they work from the periphery towards the center. This was a double message. First, he was asking mayors to take care of the informal settlements which rapid urbanization is creating in the peripheries of our cities. Second, he was telling mayors that it is at the periphery of political power, far away from national and the world powers, that solutions can be created and tested. This is the “bottom up” approach that UCLG has been using to develop our Global Agenda of Local and Regional Governments. Citizens, cities and mayors are actively looking for ways to redefine progress and development within planetary boundaries.

If the mayors keep confessing the challenges they face openly, the world has a new chance to survive. As UCLG Vice-President and Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, put it: “mayors are activists in changing the way we live and we think”.

Financing local democracy

In a few days, the Third International Conference on Financing for Development will take place in Addis Ababa. What is this conference about? Financing, yes, but it is important to remember that financing is not an end in itself. It’s a tool to achieve our loftier, shared goal of sustainable development. This is the goal that we must keep at the forefront of our minds if we are to harness financing to build a better future for citizens.

So, I wonder again: what is the Financing for Development Conference really about? An analysis of The Addis Ababa Action Agenda is revealing. Among the most frequently appearing words we find ‘countries, ‘national’, ‘global’, ‘international’ and ‘banks’. But in the over 18,000 word text, ‘local’ appears only 16 times, ‘sub-national’ only 5 and ‘municipalities’ only once. Most startling of all, ‘democracy’ none and ‘democratic’ just 2.. Given that research by Roger Myerson and others (see «DEMOCRATIC DECENTRALIZATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT», February 2014,) has shown that our ultimate goal, sustainable development, is linked to decentralization and local democracy, this should make us pause for thought.

Word cloud of the most frequently used words in the Zero Draft

For those of us concerned with financing local democracy, then, there is much work to do. We must remind Member States of their own words, recognizing the value of local democratic institutions and their role in sustanainable development in recent international conferences, particularly Rio+20, where they declared:

“We reaffirm the key role of all levels of government and legislative bodies in promoting sustainable development. We further acknowledge efforts and progress made at the local and sub-national levels, and recognize the important role that such authorities and communities can play in implementing sustainable development”

Similarly, the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation acknowledged that «local governments play critical roles in linking citizens with government, and in ensuring broad-based and democratic ownership of countries’ development agendas». The task in Addis Ababa should be to build on these lessons, not to learn them again from scratch.

Fortunately, there is some cause for optimism in the action agenda. Paragraph 34 is particularly important, recognizing a reality on the ground that local and regional governments have been highlighting for some time:

«We further acknowledge that expenditures and investments in sustainable development are being devolved to the sub-national level, which often lack adequate technical and technological capacity, financing and support. We therefore commit to scale up international cooperation to strengthen capacities of municipalities and other local authorities»

While the action agenda falls short of advocating the subsidiarity principle that we defend, at least it does recognize decentralization processes underway in many countries, and the financing challenges that this can represent.

Beyond the action agenda, the conference organizers have also sent an ambiguous message with regard to the participation of local and regional governments. 193 Member States will attend the conference and have full ammendment and voting rights. But these national governments represent less than 0.1 % of all the governments of the world. The other 99.9% are local and regional governments. UCLG, the world association that represents this 99.9%, has been given the status of a non-governmental organization at UN fora such as ECOSOC, meaning that we have the same limited opportunities to participate as civil society organizations. Nevertheless, a significant number of mayors from all over the world will be in Addis Ababa, taking advantage of the limited but increasing number of speaking opportunities that UN DESA is offering us, a move which UCLG has advocated strongly for, through the Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments,  and which we appreciate enormously.

What messages I would like to see in Addis Ababa?

Finance local democracy

First, given their recognition that sustainable development depends on the work of sub-national governments, international institutions and Member States need to put their money where their mouth is and ensure that local and regional governments have the technical and financial capacity to carry out our responsibilities.

Local banks to finance local governments

Second, the current global financial system supports patterns of production and consumption that are leading us towards a more unsustainable and unequal world. As Einstein said «we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.» The solution is not to design ever more complex global financial tools and institutions, but to go back to using local banks to finance local development and local democracy. Often the best solutions to new problems can be found in the past. Locally financed development is an old and successful model which we could recover and apply in our communities today. Mobilizing local resources for local projects in a world dominated by international private business and finance institutions is extremely difficult.

Financing diversified local solutions to global problems

Third, since we need a resilient world, able to resist known and unknown global challenges, we had better start thinking in terms of diversity. Let local territories develop their own solutions to global problems. Nothing is more dangerous than applying a single answer when we have the opportunity to innovate and experiment with a range of models. What if the problem and the answer are the wrong ones and we apply the same wrong solution at the same time all over the world? Local governments can be the world’s innovation labs, if we are given the autonomy to do so and if we design a new financial system to support it. I do not see in the action agenda a clear response to the need to finance the «territorial» responsibilities that local and regional governments have in implementing the SDGs.

So, in a nutshell, that’s my message for Addis Ababa:

Finance local democracy through local banks to allow local governments to implement local solutions to global problems.

P.D. : You can see why I enjoy being a «naive» economist rather than a financial «geek» designing FWMD’s, that is, «Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction» ( Warren Buffet dixit). Let’s hope that Addis Ababa does not give more ammunition to the financial geeks.