The New Urban Agenda (NUA) Platform is a dynamic knowledge portal for reporting on the progress made in implementing the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 at the global, regional, country and local level. The platform offerings are designed to capture both quantitative and qualitative information from governments, the United Nations System as well as other key stakeholders.
It features the New Urban Agenda Reporting Guidelines which will facilitate the preparation of Voluntary National Reports as part of the progress on implementing this Agenda. The platform also features a uniform, key data, and documentation which includes ongoing initiatives, best practices and an effective search-engine for tailor-made information searches.
UN-Habitat has conducted internal and external consultations to drive the development of the platform. Internally, UN-Habitat has established a Technical Task Team comprised of experts within different departments, and representatives from the Regional and Country Offices.
Externally, UN-Habitat convened its first Multi-Stakeholder Consultation event at the UN-Habitat Assembly. Titled “New Urban Agenda: Fostering Innovation to accelerate Implementation of the NUA towards achieving the SDGs”, UN-Habitat presented the New Urban Agenda Platform and gathered different multi-stakeholder perspectives on its functions, including ways to integrate the Platform with other national and global platforms related to the New Urban Agenda and urban-related SDGs. The speakers comprised of representatives from the governments, European Commission, UN System, Grassroots Organizations and Private Sector.
Understanding the process of implementing the New Urban Agenda is important for driving change and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. “Urbanization is one of the pillars to drive economic growth. This New Urban Agenda Platform will act as a planning tool to help us understand what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.” Mr. Claver Gatete, Minister of Infrastructure in Rwanda said. “Once we keep learning from each other then we keep improving.”
The platform aims to serve as an innovative, user-friendly and inclusive knowledge management tool for the whole UN system as well as for the Member States and other stakeholder groups. To support this, Ms. Felicitas Kubala, Deputy Mayor of Mannheim, Germany, emphasized the importance of involving cities in reporting. She said, “The platform should be easily accessible by governments and all other stakeholders. It should contain real data and offer tools that can be used by decision makers. The platform should also contain comparable data - to enable learning from each other either in city corporations or regional corporations.”
With the development of the platform, UN-Habitat will continue to deliver on its mandate of promoting sustainable urban development and human settlements. It will act as a key contribution to the knowledge pillar of the UN system-wide approach to sustainable urbanization while accelerating the information flow to decision-makers. Ms. Wallis Goelen, Advisor to Deputy Director General for Regional Urban Policy European Commission reiterated their need to report the progress of implementing the New Urban Agenda. She said, “We have not yet formally reported on the progress of New Urban Agenda using a unique mechanism to harmonize reporting and offer better ideas. Therefore, the NUA platform is very welcome. This platform is very much needed to enhance the visibility of the progress we’re making on implementation.”
Of importance for the successful delivery of the NUA Platform is shared ownership, governance, leadership and human investment. Mr. Alexandre Pinho, the Global Lead for United Nations at Microsoft stated that success is based on how we manage platforms, backed up by adequate resources. Grassroots organizations and community-led initiatives will also have easy access to this technology to track progress at the local communities. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) also confirmed the need for the NUA platform to unify the work of different United Nations (UN) entities and deliver as One UN.
The rollout of the Platform is planned in two phases, with the official launch scheduled for WUF 10, followed by a 12 months pilot phase in 2020 to integrate mechanisms and tools to measure performance including testing, refining and enhancement regularly. For more information, please write to us at nuaplatform@un.org .
Article: Lynne Karago