Dhulikhel Municipality Launches Voluntary Local Review of SDGs
Dhulikhel Municipality in Nepal on the 7th of January 2021 launched the Voluntary Local Review (VLR) of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based on the strategies set out by the city in its vision document. The municipality will carry out this process with technical support from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia (UNESCAP) and ICLEI South Asia.
ICLEI South Asia, which is supporting Dhulikhel under its CDKN-Knowledge Accelerator programme to conduct the VLR and prepare a report, held an orientation meeting on the 28th of January 2021 for the local stakeholders from the Dhulikhel Municipality.
Honorable Mayor of Dhulikhel Mr. Ashok Kumar Byanju Shrestha and Deputy Mayor Ms. Bimala Kumari Chaulagain Sharma inaugurated the second meeting, which was attended by municipal officers from the departments of planning and development, water supply, finance and social development, besides public health, education, environment and women and children, among others. Representatives of UNESCAP, Mr Samiuddin Ahmed and Ms. Paavani Reddy, and of ICLEI South Asia attended the meeting virtually.
The event aimed to improve the understanding on the SDGs, link the Voluntary National Review targets of Nepal to Dhulikhel and help the city to produce easy-to-understand and open information about its sustainable development initiatives, besides promoting co-operation with the international community. The VLR process will help the city’s stakeholders to formulate a municipal vision statement and city strategy in accordance with the SDGs and initiate their localisation in Dhulikhel. Context-appropriate indicators for monitoring the development and implementation process will complement the city strategy. Stakeholder engagements, the most crucial part of the programme, will help to build ownership of the VLR process, invite expertise, understand the key issues and demands of residents, and gain a better understanding of what the data means for policies and strategies. The outcome of the VLR will be a report developed on the basis of UN-DESA guidelines
