For the first time in Turkey, Seferihisar Municipality and Cittaslow Turkey network started the consultations to adapt their local government visions according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) announced by the United Nations.
Turkey’s first slow city (Cittaslow) Seferihisar started to develop a model example for the local governments to designate their sustainable development visions.
The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) accepted as targets for a brighter future of the humanity and sustainable living for the coming 15 years, in brief 17 global goals and 169 sub-goals, have been announced by UN in 2015 at mass events globally, where UN called local governments all around the world into action.
Since that time, the leading metropolis governments debate on how to localize the sustainable development goals and which local strategies shall be implemented. Seferihisar Municipality became the first municipality in Turkey taking initiative for responding the UN’s call for action and organized a workshop at February 1st in order to integrate the SDG to local development strategies as a result of one year of preperation. Seferihisar Municipality shared the history of sustainability terms and the global examples of local development strategies with the Turkey Cittaslow cities at the workshop. The Sustainability Committee with Seferihisar Mayor Tunç Soyer as the leader started its operations. These operations of Seferihisar Municipality aim the development of local sustainable development strategies and the local governments to advance according to sustainable development goals containing an enhanced development performance based on concepts of sustainable structure like ‘agriculture 2.0, tourism, recycling, clean energy, innovation, green economy and smart cities’. As a result, Seferihisar’s development model as the Cittaslow capital of Turkey is planned to be implemented to all Cittaslow cities in Turkey. These 17 Cittaslow cities accepted to conform ‘The New Urban Agenda’ principles, the most important conclusion of Habitat III summit in 2016 and they signed a special commitment letter at the Cittaslow Turkey 12th Coordination Meeting on 28 October 2017.
Seferihisar Municipality aims to participate in the UN GLOBAL COMPACT as signatory to publish the first Sustainability Report aligning with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) as a local government in Turkey to introduce Seferihisar’s sustainability performance to the world and most importantly to invite all potential shareholders including private sector and NGO’s willing to support the sustainability efforts to join this cause.