Project Overview

Background

The North South Local Government Co-operation Programme between the City of Lahti, Finland, and Bojanala Platinum District Municipality, South Africa, is based on the implementation of Local Agenda 21 process which was first declared in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio De Janeiro 1992 and enforced in Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development with the Plan of Implementation in 2002. The programme is also supporting the Millennium Development Goals, especially Goal no 7 on Ensuring Environmental Sustainability by 2015, set by the Millennium Summit 2000.

North-South Local Government Co-operation Programme since 2002

The Local Government partnership between the City of Lahti and the Bojanala Platinum District Municipality started in 1996 with an institutional visit from Lahti to Bojanala District. The first joint activity was a Water Resource Management Feasibility Study conducted in 1999-2000 by the experts from Lahti. Since then, the co-operation has been formalised through the North-South Local Government Co-operation Programme which is funded by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (AFLRA). This programme was first piloted between 2002-2004 with eight Finnish local governments and their Southern counterparts. Now the programme is on its third three-year period from 2008 to 2010. The Lahti-BPDM cooperation has been a part of the programme since its beginning.

The aim of North-South Local Government Cooperation Programme is to promote the global importance of local governance. It has laid a foundation for the Lahti-BPDM cooperation to grow into a strong institutional partnership with a key objective of strengthening and developing the environmental administration in both municipalities.