Vitoria-Gasteiz and Zarautz share their 2030 Agenda experiences at the third Technical Committee of the year. Save The Guide to the Local Dimension of the 2030 School Agenda was presented at the Udalsarea 2030 Technical Committee with the participation of Ingurugela, a network of public facilities supporting teachers and schools. The 61st Technical Committee of Udalsarea 2030 brought together nearly fifty participants at the Europa Congress Palace in Vitoria-Gasteiz. At the meeting, the network’s technical secretariat provided information on the Management Plan, including activities undertaken in the last six months and the work to be carried out in the coming months. Within the context of the 20th anniversary of Udalsarea 2030, the technical staff attending were able to view a video that was screened at the main event celebrating the anniversary.At the start of the committee, the technical secretariat of Udalsarea 2030 announced the network members that have joined the new agreement for the “Promotion of sustainable local action and the 2030 Local Agenda in the Basque Country”. Currently, 152 municipalities, 21 regional entities from the three provinces and 10 supra-regional entities are involved in the network. A total of 198 towns are represented in Udalsarea 2030.Ihobe, the technical secretariat of Udalsarea 2030, announced the goals of the Soil Protection and Climate Action working groups. Regarding the former, which includes 18 agents and is open to the participation of other network members, they pointed out that “the goal is to contribute to the deployment of the 2030 Soil Protection Strategy through actions or mechanisms that respond to the needs of the municipalities”.The Climate Action and Energy Transition group will be established in the course of 2023.The first meeting to establish the Climate and Energy Steering Group will be held on 18 January. A stable working group is to be set up to promote climate and energy policy and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.Erreminta-gida, a guide aimed at town councils, administrative boards, associations, associations of municipalities, development agencies and other local entities to promote energy and climate transition, has also been presented. According to EVE, the guide is divided into four sections: technical support, capacity building, aid programmes and projections. The possibility of local councils taking advantage of the youth employment programme, with 30 places for work experience contracts, subsidised by Lanbide, has been presented within the framework of Erreminta-gida.The committee shared information on the 11th programme for evaluating and monitoring public policies, which aims to support entities to boost the assessment and monitoring processes of sustainable local actions through the e-mugi application.The technical secretariat explained that the evaluation of local plans, the calculation of indicators, and the calculation of the GHG inventory and carbon footprint were still ongoing. New features include evaluating energy and climate plans and promoting environmentally friendly public procurement systems. 22 town councils and one association of municipalities are participating in the assessment, and 45 municipalities are taking part in calculating indicators, the GHG inventory, and the carbon footprint. The renewal of e-mugi and the new data report to calculate the GHG inventory have been submitted.A new feature of this 61st Technical Committee was the presentation of the “Environmentally Friendly Procurement and Contracting” session to be held on 24 January, the aim of which is to “understand the starting point and identify problems and needs”.In subsequent sessions, it is planned to define a roadmap for each entity, where the steps to join the Basque Country 2030 PCCV and achieve the commitments acquired will be set out, as well as the monitoring of the municipality’s PCCV and the opportunities provided by e-mugi.Information was provided on the meeting of the Commission of supra-municipal bodies to coordinate and promote sustainable local initiatives, with the participation of the Basque First Minister’s Office, the Basque Government Department of Health, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Provincial Council of Alava, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, EVE, URA, EUDEL and Ihobe. Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, EVE, URA, EUDEL and Ihobe participate.Vitoria-Gasteiz’s 2030 Urban Agenda and Zarautz’s 2030 Strategic PlanOn the other hand, Andrés Alonso, head of Sustainability, Climate and Energy of the City Council of Vitoria-Gasteiz; Beatriz García-Moncó, coordinator of the 2030 Local Agenda of the City Council of Vitoria-Gasteiz; Nerea Ollokiegi, Expert in Citizen Participation and Sustainability of Zarautz; and Iker Basurko, Councillor for Strategic Projects, Innovation and the 2030 Agenda of the City Council of Zarautz, presented the 2030 Agenda Plan for Vitoria-Gasteiz and Zarautz and discussed the 2030 Agenda and the Urban Agenda.They explained the obstacles they had to overcome to implement the 2030 Agenda and the learning outcomes and opportunities that have arisen in the process.On 13 September, Vitoria-Gasteiz approved the 2020 Urban Agenda, a roadmap that sets out how the municipality will be transformed in the coming years. It is a comprehensive and participatory urban and territorial strategy focusing on 2030. It is aligned with the reference frameworks that define the United Nations 2030 Agenda with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Spanish Urban Agenda with its Strategic Goals (SGs). It represents an opportunity for medium and long-term planning for the municipality, addressing local and global challenges.It has been drawn up through a process involving various municipal departments, political groups, sectoral agents in the city and forums open to the general public. It consists of 5 strategic challenges and 4 cross-cutting strategies covering 98 actions that the city will have to develop in the coming years. The 5 challenges for Vitoria-Gasteiz are to achieve a city that is connected and rebalanced; productive, innovative, entrepreneurial and digital; green, climate-neutral, resilient and self-sufficient; caring and supportive; and creative and attractive.The Zarautz Town Council, in turn, has recently approved the 2030 Strategic Plan unanimously in a plenary session. This is a shared approach within the framework of the 2030 Agenda, which outlines an action plan for the future of Zarautz. The action plan consists of 5 strategic lines, 22 programmes and 117 actions. The prior analysis was carried out in three main areas: technical preparation, participation and communication. A technical analysis has been carried out based on the SDGs (17+1) of the 2030 Agenda and their indicators. In terms of participation, the political and technical representation of the town council has been taken into account, as well as citizens and social agents, with a view to representing the Zarautz of the future. To implement this plan, 300 people representing the existing diversity among the people of Zarautz have given their opinion in a participatory process designed as a specific listening forum. Another line of work has been communicating the global challenges of the 2030 Agenda to citizens and, at the same time, allowing for their contributions to the process. “The participation process has been conceived as a listening exercise, but the specific Action Plan has been the responsibility of the plenary session, and I am particularly proud that all the political groups have approved the 2030 Strategic Plan”, said Iker Basurko, councillor for Strategic Projects, Innovation and the 2030 Agenda of the Zarautz City Council. A practical guide to the municipal dimension of the 2030 School AgendaAt the meeting, Ingurugela, a network of public facilities that support teachers and schools, presented the municipal-wide Practical Guide of the 2030 School Agenda in coordination with the Local Agenda.The Ingurugela centres coordinate environmental education plans and programmes in the non-university education system. These centres implement environmental education programmes for sustainability: The 2030 School Agenda, school ecobarometer, annual “Sustainable Schools” awards, awareness-raising and information, annual environmental education meetings, teacher training, etc.Jokin Lapaza and Aitor Basterretxea explained that “the guide aims to provide tools to help develop the new two-year 2030 School Agenda from the municipal dimension. Throughout the guide, you can find clues to the relationship between the two 2030 agendas (school and local). The goal of the 2030 School Agenda programme is to integrate the culture of sustainability into educational communities, especially among students, developing the necessary skills and seeking the commitments to intervene in solutions to ecological and social problems at local and global levels and to carry out transformative actions, both individually and collectively, in the school and the municipality.The guide, which will be published soon, includes specific cases of interventions by various schools in the municipality.Ihobe, the Technical Secretariat of Udalsarea 2030, has presented Udalsarea 2030 4.0 in the shape of thematic webinars. Its goal is “to generate a common communication forum for network members, where they can offer training webinars on the most relevant and interesting topics. Once they have been delivered, it provides a channel where members can exchange opinions, experiences, discuss the subject, add relevant information, doubts, etc., with the ultimate aim of making it easier for municipalities to develop their actions”. The last point of the meeting was the presentation of the Agree project (Aggregation and improvement of governance to take advantage of the potential of residential energy efficiency in the Basque Country). Olatz Nicolás, a researcher at Tecnalia, pointed out that Agree seeks to encourage investment in the energy refurbishment of private residential buildings built in the Basque Country between 1940 and 1980 through the design, deployment and dissemination of innovative and replicable mechanisms.The 61st Technical Committee of Udalsarea 2030 ended by examining upcoming milestones of interest and the schedules of working groups, conferences, etc.
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