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With the participation of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Third World Forum of Local Economic Development ended last Friday, October 16, after four days of intense discussions and debates. The Forum, co-organized by the City and Metropolitan City of Turin, UCLG, FAMSI, ORU FOGAR, SEBRAE, ILO and UNDP, included 3 plenary sessions, 29 panels, 26 workshops, an Arena space dedicated to the presentation of best practices and ongoing initiatives, along with other initiatives organized in parallel to the Forum’s celebration.
With more than 2,000 participants from 130 countries, the Forum offered the opportunity to compare the perspectives of national, regional and local governments, associations, entrepreneurs, academics, researchers and members of civil society on how to achieve a more inclusive, equitable and
environmentally sustainable development.
The Forum is part of a long-standing process that has been consolidating a global alliance for enhancing the policy debate and a shared vision on Local Economic Development (LED), being aware that this represents a valid approach to implement and achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted on September 27 by the United Nations General Assembly.
The Forum’s Final Declaration identified specific challenges ahead and outlined how LED constitutes today a consolidated set of diverse and widely applied practices and tools, directed at enlarging equal opportunities for income and decent work. As fully rooted in the specificity of territorial contexts and driven by the joint vision of a diversity of local actors, local development allows contextualizing and integrating the SDGs, relying on new models of partnership in the form of organized communities joining forces to find local solutions for global challenges and achieve related universal goals.