Cities, Diplomacy and Sustainable Development

The first Cities Summit of the Americas will take place in Denver, Colorado, on April 26–28. This meeting began to take shape a little less than a year ago during the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, where the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, together with the mayors of Los Angeles and Denver and during a CAF event and the Dialogue, announced this historic summit.

Cities have become vitally important spaces for development. Apart from SDG 11—which promotes their inclusion, safety, resilience and sustainability—, the role of local governments is key to attaining the goals set out in all the 17 development challenges established by the UN. This is particularly relevant in Latin America and the Caribbean, where more than 80% of people live in cities and, given their size and governance, have the ability to be at the forefront of innovative solutions for sustainable development.

In that sense, the first Cities Summit of the Americas seeks to incorporate local governments of the Americas into the roadmap set out in the 5 commitments emanating from the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles (Health and Resilience; Digital Transformation; Fair Transition to Clean, Sustainable and Renewable Energy; Sustainable and Green Future; Democratic Governance) and in the declaration on migration signed by a number of countries of the region.

The Denver Declaration on regional cooperation priorities of cities seeks to articulate and reinforce cooperation between cities and between central governments, and to tackle common challenges in housing, migration, climate change, resilience, digital transformation and transparency. It is also a call for national governments and multilateral forums to bring cities and local governments into major global debates.

The interest of local governments in developing new types of diplomacy that enable them to exert an influence on global issues is not a new trend. In fact, many of the decentralization processes have been supported by legislation acknowledging the powers of local governments to develop local diplomatic action. In France, for instance, the law on territorial administration of 1992 helped sub-national governments come up with ways of cooperation between communes nationwide and decentralized cooperation internationally. The upshot is that international relations offices were reinforced, and international cooperation funds—today part of development aid—were allocated.

Cities and territories have created agencies to foster trade links or to attract investment, both domestically and internationally. Similarly, they have devised strategies to develop city branding and other territorial appeal policies, as we can witness during major sporting or cultural events. Still in the realm of diplomatic action, noteworthy is also the town-twinning policies, honoring prominent figures, illustrious citizen nominations, or key to the city ceremonies, a practice dating back to medieval times. Cities have also played a pivotal role in humanitarian issues, such as welcoming migrants. A case in point followed the coup on September 11, 1973 in Chile (the 50th anniversary is being commemorated this year), when a good number of mayors from European countries took in Chilean political exiles, helping them raise their voices in the foreign policy arena. Also today, in Europe, there is a great number of Mediterranean cities welcoming migrants, sometimes in contrast with central government policies.

Sub-national diplomacy rounds out a task that was once the sole responsibility of central governments. As evidence to this, the first Cities Summit of the Americas is being organized under the leadership of the U.S. Department of State, based on the conviction that building stronger relationships with and among sub-national governments is of paramount importance both geopolitically, in terms of trade and investment, and for working on a sustainable development agenda.

Against this backdrop, the Denver Summit is a golden opportunity to open up new opportunities for collaboration in our hemisphere, mobilizing communities, diasporas and the private sector to build new forms of integration and cooperation for the well-being of the people of the Americas. At CAF, we are promoting an urban development model that places all people at the heart of our action, and we are organizing during this Summit a great number of sessions that will address important issues on the social agenda, including biodiversity, inclusion, infrastructure development, sustainable transport, gender and digitalization, in an effort to find, together with local authorities, businesses, civil society and other stakeholders, local solutions to global problems.