How Phoenix Is Harnessing the power of SDG 17

What occurs when a politician and a professor be a part of forces? simply ask Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Dr. Sanjeev Khagram, the Director fundamental and Dean of Thunderbird school of worldwide administration (Thunderbird) at Arizona State college (ASU).

each are properly aware of the stereotypes about their metropolis: that it’s a retirement neighborhood the place few creatures thrive moreover scorpions, rattlesnakes, and cacti. And each are excited to range your thoughts.

certainly, Arizona’s capital mustn’t be with out its challenges. It’s the hottest metropolis inside the usa, with common extreme temperatures hovering to virtually ninety levels. on the identical time, a 22-12 months drought has precipitated a historic drop in water ranges for the Colorado River basin and Lake Mead, which hundreds of hundreds of people throughout the Southwest — collectively with residents of Phoenix — rely upon for ingesting water, irrigation, and hydroelectricity. And by method of ozone air pollution, Phoenix is ranked as one among many worst areas inside the nation to dwell, in response to the American Lung affiliation.

however these days, Phoenix has additionally discover your self to be one among many quickest-rising cities inside the nation and one among many nation’s main producers of electrical autos and semiconductors. It additionally has launched the nation’s first everlasting and publicly funded office of Response and warmth Mitigation. metropolis has already electrified its police division’s motorcycle fleet as properly as to floor gear at its airport — the eleventh busiest on this planet final 12 months — and is extra seemingly to be changing its ageing buses with battery-electrical and hydrogen gasoline-cell variations, as a end result of of a grant from the bipartisan infrastructure regulation.

In constructing “the world’s most sustainable desert metropolis,” each Gallego and Khagram have embraced a common road map that has united international areas and communities throughout the globe in defending the planet and its people: the Sustainable development goals (SDGs). collectively, final 12 months they launched Phoenix worldwide Rising, an initiative to foster worldwide commerce and funding, promote the complete inclusion of immigrants and refugees, create a clever neighborhood with sister cities worldwide, and, in spite of all the pieces, to attain the worldwide goals.

This partnership between Phoenix metropolis hall and Thunderbird school of worldwide administration — which sit simply half a mile from every completely different in downtown Phoenix — has discover your self to be a driving drive behind a sustainability method that is reshaping civic movement, agency funding, and a neighborhood-to-worldwide imaginative and prescient for the prolonged time period.

“i am very fortunate to have the Thunderbird school of worldwide administration and ASU in my yard,” Gallego says. “Thunderbird is strolling distance from Phoenix metropolis hall. they’ve been a key confederate in so many areas. … They dropped at the desk members of the workforce that had been very involved with the Sustainable development goals and will assist us make sure that we had been ready to make the most of them effectively.”

With what Khagram calls “arguably the most vital assortment of school, specialists, lecturers, and college students engaged on sustainability factors,” Thunderbird not solely serves as a typical floor for people from completely different sectors and areas of expertise to get back collectively, it additionally serves as a take a look at laboratory of sorts. “Potential improvements are examined on our campuses after which, in the event that they work, they’re scaled out to the neighborhood,” Khagram says. “so as that’s a very extremely effective engine of transformation as a end result of it connects residents and all of these assorted stakeholders to the distinctive capacities of the college by method of convening, thought management, and evaluation and development.”

One concrete event of this collaboration is metropolis’s Cool Pavement program, which entails coating streets with a lighter, reflective paint. This seemingly straightforward decision addresses what’s thought as a end result of the “metropolis warmth island impression,” by which pavements and completely different impermeable surfaces take up photo voltaic radiation and warmth up their environment by re-emitting that radiation as warmth. Researchers at ASU have found that this reflective paint can reduce again floor temperatures by as a lot as 10 levels, collectively with lowering the quantity of potholes. Gallego says she’s already fielded inquiries from mayors in South America and Europe who’re contemplating adopting this strategy of their very personal cities.

one other event of the Gallego-Khagram collaboration launched feminine entrepreneurs with Mexican heritage, who typically lack entry to capital, markets, and assist, to the native Mexican Consulate for technical teaching, consulting, and networking alternatives. Gallego says a lot of the women who participated had been ready to develop their companies and really feel extra linked to metropolis of Phoenix and to completely different companies in Mexico. Since then, the Mexican authorities has unfold this methodology to consulate places of work all world large.

each Gallego and Khagram level to the SDGs as an reply to not solely work collectively, however in addition with completely different governments, corporations, and organizations worldwide which would possibly be grappling with a lot of the identical challenges. final 12 months, Khagram helped launch a principal-of-its-form publication, the worldwide SDG Accountability Report, to showcase how numerous stakeholders throughout the planet are tackling the 2030 Agenda at subnational, nationwide, and worldwide ranges.

all by way of her latest go to to Thunderbird, Gallego met with entrepreneurs from Israel who’re using superior analytics and synthetic intelligence to raised handle water assets, collectively with creating state-of-the-artwork sensors for detecting leaks. It’s an strategy that illustrates SDG 17 (Partnerships for the goals).

“now we want to study as a lot as we will from the worldwide dialog,” Gallego says. “By committing to be an aspect of the method, it helped us be an aspect of a a lot greater collaboration.”

When cities throughout Europe expert historic warmth waves this summer time, Gallego stepped as a lot as supply technical assist and suggestion. “We’ve realized classes like discover out how to assist firefighters who’re working in intense warmth environments, and discover out how to confirm we create cooling facilities,” she says.

And this alternate of knowledge works each methods. Thanks partially to insights gleaned from metropolis officers in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for event, Phoenix launched a tree planting program to increase tree cowl in underserved parts of metropolis that each informs and contains neighborhood residents. Like Gallego, leaders in Freetown have turned to the SDGs as a blueprint for a better decision to manipulate.

“Like most completely different cities, you are inclined to see extra lush tree cowl in wealthier areas,” Gallego says. “We realized from Freetown that having a neighborhood workforce from the communities by which we’re planting the timber helps get further buy-in and broadens the stakeholders who revenue.”

as a end result of of this, Phoenix’s “Tree equity Accelerator” entails teaching metropolis residents in metropolis forestry to foster new jobs expertise, entrepreneurship, and native possession of the initiative.

Harnessing the SDGs to Drive local climate movement

not like many large-metropolis mayors in America, Gallego didn’t observe regulation earlier than working for political office; she studied environmental science and labored at one among Arizona’s largest utility corporations. She credit this tutorial pedigree and work expertise for giving her an unusual but more and more very important perspective as a politician, particularly in a metropolis that is already feeling the outcomes of most and unpredictable climate. all by way of Gallego’s first 12 months in office, in 2019, Phoenix expert a widespread drought adopted by catastrophic flooding, prompting a presidential disaster declaration.

“local climate change mustn’t be a hypothetical future draw again for us,” she says. “it is basically the most pressing situation proper now.”

Gallego additionally attributes the closing public’s growing consciousness of local climate change — and the ensuing sense of urgency to take local climate movement — to a rising momentum inside the U.S. and overseas for attaining the SDGs, significantly at a neighborhood stage. “As municipal governments, we’re shut to the people. we will get issues achieved and now we have the motivation to take movement,” she says. “Mayors see the impression of local climate change daily. … We additionally see that our residents revenue in a very direct means from being an aspect of worldwide conversations and being linked to the assets that embrace it.”

Like Gallego, Khagram brings exceptionally related work expertise to his place as Director fundamental and Dean of Thunderbird at ASU. In 2015, the identical 12 months that UN Member States unanimously ratified the Sustainable development goals, he helped to decide the worldwide Partnership for Sustainable development knowledge, which is now hosted on the UN basis, to mobilize dynamic knowledge-pushed dedication-making in assist of the worldwide goals. He later helped metropolis of la create its personal sustainability road map as Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Senior Advisor on the SDGs, which included a challenge by which native school college students mapped how LA’s plans, insurance coverage policies, and budgets aligned with the 2030 Agenda. When Khagram moved to Phoenix, he launched the teachings he realized from each roles with him — particularly with reference to the significance of SDG 17: Partnerships for the goals.

“What each experiences strengthened is that after we deliver stakeholders collectively with unimaginable management and catalytic assets, the potential for impression is large,” he says. “That’s actually the key sauce.”

on the center of this collaboration are college students who deliver youthful power, current views, and a private understanding of what’s at stake. “It’s actually about their period and their future,” Khagram says of in the present day’s youthful people. “They’re bringing in lived experiences of the means by which the world is altering round them, and additionally they want to type the planet they want to dwell in.”

Thunderbird is harnessing this potential by equipping college students with assets which will flip their large ideas into exact outcomes. this means offering entry to 3D printers, augmented, prolonged, and digital actuality (AR, XR, and VR) labs, and completely different reducing-edge expertise, as properly as to “worldwide problem initiatives” that deal with exact-life factors dealing with corporations and native governments worldwide, not simply Phoenix.

as a end result of of its dimension and performance, Thunderbird at ASU particularly, which in the present day boasts 50,000 alumni in a single hundred forty international areas and 20 regional facilities of Excellence throughout the globe, means Khagram can broaden this partnership past metropolis limits. Take Thunderbird’s youthful SDG Innovators program, a partnership with the UN worldwide Compact to foster social entrepreneurship in Brazil, China, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, Ukraine, the united kingdom, and the U.S., by offering on-line and in-particular person workshops, case research, agency visits, and discussion board discussions for people under 35. Earlier this 12 months, Thunderbird launched the one hundred Million Learners worldwide Initiative, which goals to current free, on-line training in forty languages to one hundred million college students by 2030. The initiative is significantly shut to Khagram’s coronary heart. as a end result of the son of refugees from Uganda, he grew up understanding better than most the significance of training and alternative.

one other event is Thunderbird’s worldwide Carbon elimination Partnership, an bold effort to cease the worst penalties of local climate change by eradicating and sequestering carbon dioxide from the environment. this means bringing collectively a broad array of governments, corporations, organizations, and enterprises to create tangible — and well timed — outcomes. It’s a daring effort that would have large implications throughout the worldwide goals, and one which embodies the power of SDG 17.

worldwide local climate Ambition begins at house

final 12 months’s UN local climate Change convention in Glasgow proved to be a turning level for native leaders like Gallego, as better than 1,000 worldwide cities, collectively with Phoenix, dedicated to halving greenhouse gasoline emissions by 2030.

“For mayors, COP 26 was a pivotal second,” she says. “Many nationwide governments are actually struggling to meet their commitments. in the meantime, there are cities which would possibly be delivering forward of schedule in some circumstances. That’s an exact level of satisfaction for us.”

As a member of the C40 Cities, a worldwide community of mayors devoted to local climate movement, Gallego is joined by completely different spectacular feminine leaders from Bogota, Montreal, Paris, and elsewhere. “The Mayor of Mexico metropolis has acquired a Nobel for her work round local climate change, so we had been in good agency. I can’t compete with that stage of a prize,” she says with amusing. “however as somebody with an environmental diploma by background, I do really feel like I’m actually ready to make the most of that in a means that makes life elevated for my residents and contains a extra healthful future for my metropolis.”

At this 12 months’s COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Khagram labored to further these commitments and cooperation by tapping Thunderbird’s deep connections to worldwide institutions. This included co-internet hosting a roundtable with the Presidency of Kenya and international coverage on worldwide carbon elimination. The inclusive dialogue mirrored the spirit of SDG 17 by highlighting a quantity of views throughout sectors as properly as to geographies, collectively with the usa, Colombia, Malaysia, and small island creating states.

For Khagram, the important factor to tackling principal challenges — from local climate change to systemic inequality — is collaboration, plain and simple: “Get people collectively, have a typical set of values, commitments, and imaginative and prescient, put some assets behind it, get to work, resolve factors, create alternatives and it’s superb,” he says. “Don’t try and over-engineer it.”

Gallego agrees, significantly by method of Phoenix worldwide Rising and leveraging SDG 17 to unlock progress throughout the 2030 Agenda. “transferring in direction of large-picture goals is useful for us to protect focused as we decide to being a extra sustainable neighborhood,” she says. “This initiative has launched a lot of people collectively and generated a lot of enthusiasm.”

For a spot that was dubbed “America’s least sustainable metropolis” in a 2011 e-book, Phoenix and its leaders are working to range each the notion and the actuality of life for native residents.

“Phoenix bought its title as a consequence of the legendary chicken that rose from the ashes,” Gallego mentioned all by way of an interview earlier this 12 months. “It’s a narrative of making magnificence out of not so a lot inside the start. And we hope that’s the environment now we have right here in Phoenix — the place we take what now we want to work with and create one factor actually spectacular.”