For the fifth time in a row, the Summer Academy of the UNSSC - Knowledge Centre for Sustainable Development of the United Nations Academy for Advanced Training - was accompanied by the Service Agency Communities in One World (SKEW) with expert contributions and panel discussions. The financial support provided by the Service Agency enabled six municipal representatives from four German cities and their twin cities in the Global South to participate, e.g. from the city of Herrenberg, the city of Arnsberg, the city of Saalfeld an der Saale and Bonn as well as Ramallah, Cape Coast and Chengdu. The event in August 2020 was furthermore attended by participants from various institutions, national and local governments and international organizations, as well as from civil society, academia and the private sector. Following up the UNSCC Summer Academy last summer there is now published a documentation about the event.
Especially the approaches of holistic implementation of the Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainability Goals were considered as extremely valuable by all participants. This topic was also addressed in the panel discussion where Livia Pichorner, SKEW, and Yunus Arikan from ICLEI reported on their cooperation with local authorities. The opportunities of SDG localisation became more concrete as the representatives of SKEW partnership projects, Stefan Wagner (City of Bonn) and Nadine Burbar (Ramallah), shared their experiences about the implementation of the SDGs in their municipalities.
During those five days and in numerous sessions, workshops and virtual field trips, the participants and attendees had the opportunity to discuss transformative and conceptual approaches with experts on the Agenda 2030, thus taking further steps to bringing the Agenda and its 17 Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs) to life. Learning from one another, exploring possible partnerships, exchange tangible examples and good practices – that is the main idea and the success of the Summer Academy.
