Culture, Nature, Heritage, Cities: Case Studies on Localizing the SDGS

This side event will feature several presentations of best-practice from local governments and private organizations in how culture and heritage are harnessed to achieve sustainable urbanism, informing some of the many ways that the protection and valorization of cultural heritage, integrated with natural heritage, serve to achieve the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda. The vital role of heritage in sustainable development is expressed most explicitly in Target 11.4 for 'strengthening efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage' under the Urban Goal (SDG11) to make cities safe, resilient, inclusive and sustainable, and implicitly in many other SDGs, notably on cultural tourism and creative industries (8.3, 8.9, 12b, 14.1, 14.7 and 15), on the natural environment (13, 14 and 15) and on peace and governance (16 and 17). Furthermore, the inherent links of culture, cultural and natural heritage, creative industries, sustainable tourism and related concepts are expressed in the New Urban Agenda in numerous sections (particularly no. 10, 38, 97, 124 and 125, as well as no. 26, 34, 37, 45 and 60). Successful implementation of both the SDGs and NUA rely on key element of 'localization', i.e. connecting and empowering the full range of actors and stakeholders, from the highest policy level to the smallest communities and individuals acting at the grassroots level. Localization is also a key approach for connecting best practices on the ground with the global reporting processes of the UN. The event will provide a platform to see how local actions position themselves vis a vis the SDGs and NUA, contributing to the horizontal and vertical connections of policy and localized implementation. Examples will cover some economic indicators, community-based information tools and local government strategies for protecting the cultural and natural heritage assets of cities and harnessing them for socio-economic development.