Qazvin’s selection as the world’s first city to materialize the United Nations’ urban Sustainable Development Goals will benefit Iran as a whole, according to the city’s mayor.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday about Qazvin’s selection as the first pilot city to implement and monitor SDGs, Masoud Nosrati said, “Our success here will have a profound impact on other cities in the country. We will be able to replicate our achievements across Iran.”
Located 150 kilometers northwest of Tehran, Qazvin achieved the distinction of being the City Prosperity Initiative’s first city to monitor the implementation of SDGs last month.
CPI is a global initiative launched by the United Nation’s Habitat program, which allows city authorities, as well as local and national stakeholders, to identify opportunities and potential areas of intervention for their cities to become more prosperous.
Its composite index comprising six dimensions serves to define targets that can support the formulation of evidence-based policies, including the definition of city-visions and long-term plans that are both ambitious and measurable.
From an environmental perspective, Iran is not well known on the international stage, “so the selection of an Iranian city for such a grand mission is important and prepares the stage for other cities to improve their global profile.”
UN-Habitat, in partnership with International City Leaders, will support Qazvin to identify priority areas and relevant key issues of sustainable urban development for more effective and efficient investment planning.
Reza Pourvaziri, president of ICL, said Qazvin has put Iran in a position to become “a leader in sustainable urban development”, Mehr News Agency reported.
Sustainable Urban Development
The UN’s new sustainable development agenda, devised in September 2015, contain 17 targets known collectively as Sustainable Development Goals. The goals were adopted by UN member states to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all, and each goal has specific objectives that must be achieved by 2030.
There are over 20 SDG indicators that have direct relevance to the urban environment. The Greener Cities Partnership, launched by UN Environment Program and UN-Habitat, has offered to help Qazvin officials establish a set of indicators most relevant to the local challenges facing the city. These challenges include issues such as air pollution, dust storms, the decay of green, historical and public sites, transport, as well as those related to water scarcity, climate change and waste management, among others.
The GCP and CPI will monitor the indicators for a mutually agreed period of time. By the end of 2016, a policy action plan derived from the data and information obtained through the CPI framework will be presented by Nosrati to be discussed with local stakeholders.
One of the oldest cities in Iran, Qazvin is rich in both cultural and natural features and is rapidly growing, necessitating the creation of a solid monitoring system to provide long-term data on results of policies and growth patterns.
