Partnerships for sustainable cities

The Cooperation between the city of Reggio Emilia (Italy) and the city of Pemba (Mozambique) began in 1975, with the signature of a friendship agreement between the two cities. From that moment on, the collaboration between the two cities has never ceased to be active, evolving over the years in terms of modalities, approaches and forms. From the first solidarity actions of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, mainly based on concrete aid to the emergency that Mozambique found itself experiencing also due to the post-independence civil war, the forms of collaboration have evolved with the use of the most current tools and approaches of decentralised cooperation for development.
This new course culminated in 2012 with the signature of an effective twinning agreement between the two cities, covering the priority areas of cooperation for a joint common local sustainable development. Over the past 12 years Reggio Emilia and Pemba have put in place innovative ways of cooperation between cities, defining an approach based on the idea of exchange of good practices, as well as collaboration and dialogue among peers through field visits and hybrid exchanges, involving not only the different municipal departments, but also the best expertise from the private and social private sector at the level of the two cities. Moreover, the two communities have always been at the centre of the process, always participating in the definition of the priorities of the areas of work addressed by the exchanges and projects. The Municipality of Milan, specifically, then participated in the same way in this partnership, involving a number of departments and local actors considered leaders in certain specific sectors like food policies and wastewater management.
Cooperation is based on the idea of an integrated approach to sustainable city design, management and development. Integrated in the sense that it sees multistakeholder participation and the participatory and multidisciplinary definition of local policies as its centrality, in order to strengthen local authorities in the localisation of the 2030 Agenda goals. Municipalities are therefore at the centre of defining the governance of their territory, capable of creating synergies with all stakeholders and actors (national or international) in order to achieve a strong objective established by medium to long-term local policies.
These enormous steps forward have also been made possible by the "Partnership for sustainable cities" programme financed by the European Commission.
The event will therefore start from the inter-community cooperation approaches implemented by the Pemba - Reggio Emilia - Milan collaboration, to discuss in general the importance and value of Decentralised Cooperation, and the central role of Local Authorities in achieving the 2030 Agenda Goals, particularly on the topics of participatory governance, sustainable and inclusive integrated urban management and climate change adaptation and mitigation.