IFLA participated actively at United Cities and Local Governments’ annual retreat and campus meetings, underlining the importance of knowledge, culture and libraries for delivering inclusive, sustainable development.

IFLA works closely with United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the premier organisation for local and regional governments globally, given the importance of these bodies for many of our members, not least public and community libraries.

It was therefore an honour to be invited to participate in its annual retreat and campus meetings, being held this week in Barcelona. The meetings had a particular focus on youth, as well as on how to accelerate work to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals ahead of 2030.

Joining discussions about preparations for this year’s High-Level Political Forum, as well as new models for development inspired by the practices of local government, we underlined the contributions of libraries and their work.

A first priority was to recognise fully the role of culture. IFLA is a co-founder of the Culture2030Goal campaign alongside UCLG, and has enjoyed a strong partnership with them over many years in advocating for this.

Local and regional governments are often much more aware of the importance of culture, both as a factor shaping behaviour and policy effectiveness, and as a sector that can help inspire change. IFLA’s intervention was an opportnity to thank UCLG for its work here, and to repeat calls for culture to be a structuring principle in future development agendas.

A second goal is to ensure that access to knowledge is not taken for granted in future. This is a key factor in ensuring that people have the possibility to take decisions about their own lives, but is too often ignored as a policy issue. We called for efforts to localise the UN’s Global Principles on Information Integrity.

Finally, we underlined the value of an integrated appraoch, recognising not least that the distinction between knowledge and culture itself is constructed, and in many communities does not exist. Similarly, libraries offer a highly versatile infrastructure for achieving the goals of sustainable and inclusive urbanisation in an integrated way.

Through this, we have an important role in delivering on a local social covenant – a key theme for UCLG – demonstrating the value of working together as communities to improve the lives of all.