In an interview with Citiscope, David Nabarro, a British physician and former executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that cities have a key role to play in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs and the New Urban Agenda are about changing the way we think and work in order to achieve a low-carbon, resilient and equitable society by 2030. As people are very much engaged at the local level, “we’re seeing more and more that it’s through local government that you can get big shifts via a combination of awareness, actions and activism,” he said.

Nbarro was especially pleased that there was a focus on local government action at the climate talks that wrapped up in Marrakech last week, emphasising that local action will make a lot of difference once the Paris climate agreement comes into effect. But as he explained, cities don’t have to act more quickly than national governments on the issue of climate change: “There are some aspects that smaller administrations, cities and local governments can move on more rapidly and more substantially than the nation, whereas there are other areas where you need the nation to set the trend and then everybody follows.”

What matters most for Nabarro is that individual and community action, local government action and national action are encouraged in line with the SDGs. And when some cities or local governments move quicker than others, “then we encourage those who move slower, so they catch up. In that way, I believe we will get progress.”