Seventy-seven national municipalities have already joined the new section of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities (ANMP) dedicated to sustainable development, which aims to provide municipalities with information on good practices to adopt related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The Section table guarantees that more municipalities will join in the near future.
“There will be a sharing of the good practices of the municipalities, we will hear specialists, authorized voices at national and international level according to the themes approached in each meeting, and we will have rapporteurs who will communicate the state of the art in that theme”, explains, to JN, Vítor Aleixo, chairman of the board of the section and mayor of Loulé.
According to the Section’s action plan, presented last Friday during the first meeting, “the preparation of local voluntary reports arouses particular interest among the municipalities and is therefore a matter that requires permanent monitoring by the Section”.
Knowing the various tools to support their preparation, making municipalities less committed to the importance of these reports, knowing the Government’s position regarding the involvement of municipalities in the preparation of the next national report are aspects considered as priorities in the section’s action plan.
Among the section’s responsibilities are local voluntary reports and the training of municipal technicians who will have the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on the table. “In addition to local reports, we have a plenary for external communication and each municipality has to work to involve communities. The world has limits, resources are finite and people cannot be victims of this development”, stresses Vítor Aleixo.
In addition to the mayor of Loulé, the board of the new section of the ANMP is made up of the vice-presidents Miguel Abrunhosa (councillor of the Municipality of Bragança) and Laura Rodrigues (mayor of the Municipality of Torres Vedras) and by the members Manuela Alvares (councillor of Matosinhos City Council) and Dina Silva (City Councilor of Câmara de Lobos).
United Nations Goals
The main sustainable development goals of the United Nations are eradicating poverty and hunger, gender equality, decent work with economic growth, reducing inequalities, climate action and protecting land and marine life.
meeting in april
The next meeting of the Sustainable Development Goals section of municipalities will take place in April in Bragança. Vítor Aleixo hopes, by then, to have more municipalities participating.
