HLPF 2018: SDG11 review

 

 

 

 

2018 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development
SDG11 review

David Suttie

The way cities and human settlements are planned will influence outcomes across the entirety of the 2030 Agenda. Indeed, progress in areas such as food systems, employment, infrastructure, inequality, ecosystems and resilience to climate change will be dependent upon the planning processes around human settlements. Crucially, all these topics cut across both urban and rural areas.

In particular, the planning around sustainable cities and human settlements will be critical for the functioning of food systems.  Food systems, in turn, are intimately related to management of and use of environmental and ecosystem services - including water, land and energy – as well as influencing, and being influenced by, economy-wide patterns of consumption and production.

Food systems and all their dynamic parts – from primary production, processing, marketing and consumption - cut across rural and urban areas, shaping outcomes in terms of food production and consumption, employment, climate resilience and the environment. These outcomes shape the resilience and sustainability of societies at large.

It is vitally important that planning of cities and human settlements creates linkages between rural and urban areas. This creates opportunities for value addition in agri-food value chains across the rural-urban continuum, connects rural producers to urban markets, and enables consumers in urban and rural areas to benefit from diets based around nutritious, diverse and locally produced food.  To achieve this potential, investments and policies must be geared towards the needs of groups such as smallholder farmers and indigenous peoples, who are key agents of sustainable development in terms not only of promoting food security and nutrition but also promoting sustainable management and use of water, energy and biodiversity and addressing climate change.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Planning sustainable, inclusive and mutually beneficial human settlements require multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary approaches to planning, governance and partnerships which adopt systems-wide approaches, strengthening mutually beneficial interactions between urban, peri-urban, intermediate towns and rural settlements to ensure no-one is left behind.

More specifically, it is imperative that planning processes, investments and policies – in areas such as infrastructure development, food procurement regulations and market access – support local food system actors across the rural-urban continuum. This means ensuring rights, especially to land and productive resources, are respected, key stakeholders in both rural and urban areas are given a voice in planning processes, and investments are geared towards bringing rural and urban people together to foster mutually beneficial solutions to common problems.  

Such integrated planning approaches can enable urbanization to  contribute to addressing inequalities – including between rural and urban areas – and building societies that bring opportunities for all. Only in this way can our human settlements be sustainable, resilient and leave no-one behind.

Thank you.