Aalborg Commitments Policy recommendations Mia Crawford Council of

Aalborg Commitments Policy recommendations Mia Crawford, Council of the Baltic Sea States

Lahti, Tallinn, Växjö, Riga, CBSS & ICLEI • Self assessment – Achievements in city/region – Assessment of Aalborg Commitments • Task Force meeting on 6 April 2011 – Lessons learned on working with Aalborg – Policy recommendations

Lessons learned • Excellent tool to be used when starting to work on sustainable development in a city • Baseline review useful when developing own environmental or cross-sectoral programmes • Good to use as a checklist • Planning tool to stimulate cross-sectoral coordination • If targets are set they can be a good channel to show the progress in sustainability work in the city • Too broad with too many objectives, which makes it difficult to focus and hard to use in practical work • Indicators on social well being are poorly developed.

Policy recommendations • Simplifying the Aalborg Commitments to have few more general objectives • Cross-sectoral cooperation needs to be strengthened • Developing a comprehensive list of indicators to each of the overall general objectives mentioned above - Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities • Linking the evaluation and reporting step in the integrated sustainability management cycle to budget process and prioritisation for the next cycle • Fostering better cooperation and exchange between various different sustainability processes targeted to the local authorities, such as the Aalborg Commitments, Informed Cities, Covenants of Mayors, Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities, UBC, ICLEI and Local Agenda 21