How Can the Healthy Municipalities, Cities and Communities Strategy Advance the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda? Lessons from Agenda 21 and the MDGs in Brazil

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Healthy Municipalities, Cities and Communities Strategy (HMC) seek to advance health promotion processes and practices and to improve quality of life in the countries of the Americas. Its core pillars include developing healthy public policies and strengthening social participation and intersectoral collaboration, with a strong emphasis on good governance and sustainability in order to promote structural and systematic changes for the social production of health. Recently, the importance of investing in Healthy Municipalities, Cities and Communities has been emphasized as key for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGD). Healthy Cities was also highlighted as a central theme in the 9th Global Conference on Health Promotion, organized by the World Health Organization (WHO 2017). Local level action, spearheaded under the HMC framework, that seek to promote health equity and integral public policies have the potential to link national and international agendas, such as the SDG, based on the real needs of the territory and its population. Brazilian municipalities have developed rich experiences with the implementation of Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) over the past few decades. These experiences can form the basis to reflect upon how to advance the SDG agenda by incorporating it into local agendas through a Healthy and Sustainable Municipalities, Cities and Communities Strategy. Networks of HMC, that are present throughout the American continent, can play a key role in this process for its capillarity and potential to mobilize actors at various levels of action. They can also be strategic to promote capacity building and education process to strengthen communities’ ability to promote sustainable actions. This chapter will include a revision of the lessons learned from the experience of Brazilian municipalities with the implementation of Agenda 21 and the MDG as well as a reflection on the role of networks to promote the SDG agenda. It will finalize with recommendations on how to advance the SDG agenda in local agendas as part of the HMC strategy.