Ilsur Metshin: “There are no unimportant things in improving the quality of life in cities”

President of the Eurasian branch of the World organization "United cities and local governments", mayor of Kazan Ilsur Metshin takes part in the high-level week of the UN General Assembly. Under General Assembly auspices, a forum of local and regional governments is held in New York on September 24-25.

In his speech, Ilsur Metshin spoke about the initiative of the Eurasian branch of the “United cities and local governments” to build partnerships with national and regional associations of the local authorities. As explained the mayor of Kazan, the essence of the partnership is to conduct training seminars for the local and regional leaders. These workshops will examine which sustainable development goal (SDG) an urban activity belongs to, and what local authorities can do for contribution the goal.

Two-hour seminars will be held in the framework of meetings of the local governments’ associations. The first seminar is scheduled on October 31, 2019, during the UN- Habitat World cities day, which will be held in Yekaterinburg.

An important step towards the realization of sustainable development at all levels of government, is synchronization the efforts of local and national authorities in the preparation of voluntary national survey on SDG. The UCLG Eurasian branch and a number of regional associations entered the Commission for the preparation of the report.

Speaking about the achievements of the UCLG Eurasian branch, Ilsur Metshin gave the examples of how the member cities of the branch implement projects in the field of sustainable development goals.

In order to improve the environment, the municipal transport of Yakutsk will use the gas fuel, and in the cities of the Astrakhan region, the Republics of Dagestan and Tatarstan, training seminars were held under the Sendai framework program.

Much is being done in Kazan to involve citizens in achieving sustainable development goals. Thus, the head of the city told the forum participants that a charity warehouse "The good hands" was organized in the capital of Tatarstan a few years ago, where people can bring their goods for charity.

Separately, Ilsur Metshin noted the initiative of Kazan to introduce lessons of separate garbage collection in schools.

"There are no small and unimportant things in improving the quality of life in cities", Ilsur Metshin said in the conclusion. "The mosaic of the city's well-being is made up of small puzzles, so it is especially important that the goals are achieved as soon as possible".