Our commitment to the global agenda

ORU Fogar was proud and honoured to have been the reception and representation platform for the world’s regions at the World Forum on Local Economic Development in Turin.  The regions, together with the local actors, were given the opportunity to present their experiences and show their commitment to the global agenda. This implies a commitment to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals recently adopted by the United Nations, but also to the COP21 to be held in December in Paris and to Habitat III, to be held in Quito, Ecuador. The Nation-States commitment to this agenda is outstanding, but that of the local and regional actors is essential because we are an immense army in favour of peace and development. An army present in all corners of the globe. 

The forum was also a plea in favour of decentralisation, in favour of the subsidiarity principle, and in favour of political autonomy. The words by Pedro González, Governor of the Paraguayan Department of Amambay, are still ringing in my ears: "We are calling for a true decentralisation of Paraguay” or “Centralisation in many countries represents a significant impediment for their economic development".

 I also believe that during the meeting great emphasis was placed to make a political assessment of the territories. 2016 will be Habitat III’s year, so there will be a great deal of talk about the urban issues. The Turin forum dealt extensively with the territories, the need to find territorial balance and to have infrastructures and services, and the urban-rural linkages. We are very proud that ORU Fogar has contributed to that.

Inevitably, the issue of food and nutrition was also dealt with. I say inevitably because we were in the land of Slow Food, of the Mother’s Earth Fair, and right next to the Milan Expo on Food and Nutrition. We thoroughly enjoyed the speech by Carlo Petrini, founder of the international movement Slow Food. We feel close to his demand for the need to recover biological diversity and we took part in this discussion through a panel on food security.

 The Turin LED Forum leaves us great sentences. In my opinion, especially noteworthy is this sentence by the Governor of Santa Fe (Argentina): "Decentralisation is the leaven in development”. He also explained that it is always better to export flour than wheat, and even better to export biscuits.  The host Piero Fassino, Mayor of Turin, also said some words that are worth remembering. He said that we must go beyond globalising the markets, the capitals and the economy, and globalise democracy, development, peace and freedom.

To conclude, I would like to express immense gratitude to the organisers of this successful event.   I would also like to thank the UNDP for their coordinating efforts and the City of Turin for the great work.  Lastly, I would like to invite you all to ORU’s next General Assembly, that will be held in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the 14 th and 15th April 2016.