12. A consensus emerged from the workshop discussions with regard to the following ideas:

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Lester Pierce
5 years ago
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1 Conclusions Innovation and Environmental Sustainability: Innovation and Technology as Driving Forces for Sustainable Development and Social Cohesion A Local Government Perspective 1. The Forum studied an overview of the different dimensions of the relationship between technology and innovation as driving forces of sustainable development from the point of view of local governments. i 2. The notion of social innovation (SI) was adopted. Generally, this shall be defined as the collective capacity to respond to unsatisfactory situations in diverse fields of social life. In practical terms, SI is defined in lasting action and transformation. SI has no specific form and makes itself manifest in both intangible and tangible ways. In the first case, it takes the form of practices, services, ways of doing things, manners of organizing social action, laws, standards and rules of conduct; in the second case, it takes the form of production technologies, devices and products. In all cases, SI appears as a novel solution or a solution outside the established norms in a given context. 3. SI occurs in a process of change and improvement in the development of individuals, in their territorial surroundings and in their work environment. On the three planes, SI, in order to be such, should produce better results than traditional practices, apart from producing durable and sustainable transformations. 4. Under no circumstances can SI be conceived of as an accidental event. Its nature necessarily implies actions that are undertaken for predetermined purposes. SI thus presumes the existence of agents acting in accordance with defined objectives. The existence of a leadership and an organization favourable to transformation is a determining factor in the development of SI. It requires the existence of cooperative leadership capable of acknowledging the added value of collective work, open to the new, and open to participation. On the local or territorial scale, leadership of this sort comes with a democratic and representative institutional character committed to the active promotion of the diverse factors favouring and sustaining innovative impulses. 1

2 5. SI can and should be motivated by public institutions. In the case of local or territorial governments, their fundamental task is that of acting as connectors between the agents susceptible of generating and producing innovation. In democracy, local governments are almost the natural promoters of SI due to the fact that, on one hand, what is new and transformation express convictions and objectives in the programmes of those who govern, and on another hand, due to the returns that this can bring them in terms of political competence (greater public support, greater possibilities of electoral triumphs and the exercise of power). 6. It is known that economic growth is principally generated by innovation and knowledge. ii Although there are no precise measurements in this regard, innovation plays an equally decisive role in social progress. Moreover, SI is a determining factor of economic growth. Historically, the dissemination of new technologies (electricity, cars, and the internet, to cite three landmark examples on the subject) has depended on SI as much as on technical innovation properly speaking, or entrepreneurial innovation. In the world of the 21 st century, the interrelationship between SI and economic growth seems to have grown closer: some of the barriers that today more seriously restrict growth, such as climate change, or (in a significant number of countries) an aging population, can only be surmounted by promoting and generating SI (which, it is fitting to underscore, includes as a greater notion technological innovation and its socioeconomic dissemination). 7. By means of public policy, local governments, each in their specific circumstances, can contribute in varied ways towards configuring surroundings propitious to innovation: by promoting and reinforcing the emergence of new social and economic leaderships in the community; by channelling support focussed on Research and Development projects in specific areas identified as priorities; by acting as instruments for new methods of intervention; by promoting system transformations in strategic fields that require multidisciplinary approaches, such as that of climate change and its implications for development and welfare; by linking SMEs with large Research and Development institutions, such as universities; and by giving impulse to laws and regulations that are pertinent to innovation. 2

3 8. In the local or territorial bases of countries, the fields in which demands for Innovation are generated are several. Among these may be mentioned, for instance, business; technology, understood in the broad sense; public policy; urban public services; community development in its varied facets; and the area concerned with the reduction of material and symbolic inequality. It is around this demand for innovation that the territorial administrations can focus a set of measures pertinent to specific fields of public policy, all of them closely related to each other to the measure that, as a whole, they shape dimensions in which the acts of local governments converge in the quest for the objectives of social cohesion and sustainability in development: i) Environmental sustainability ii) Social cohesion iii) Public services iv) Governance and reinforcement of an institutional democracy v) Competitivity and economic development. 9. Around these five dimensions of the local public sphere, SI and technological developments are key factors in finding new ways of doing things, with the specific purpose of responding to social needs by improving the general conditions of welfare. Public institutions and, in particular, local governments, have the obligation to invest in innovation, facilitate the use of, and promote access to, the new technologies in their territories and, as regards the development of public policies on quality, to be active agents in knowledge management, in economic promotion, and in strategies of coordination with the citizenry. 10. A fundamental part of this strategic role of territorial governments lies in the possibility that, due to their position as a front line in the interlocution and interaction of public authority with the citizenry and society, they contribute to temper the concept so widespread in some media and some sectors according to which technologies by themselves are the key to finding solutions in almost all fields. They will have and already do have, in fact a central role in this direction, but their use requires an orientation that can mitigate and reduce their risks and secondary effects. 3

4 In this terrain, local governments must implement strategies of regulation that, in turn, require analyses and democratic surveillance through citizen participation, regarding the distribution of the costs and advantages of the structural changes for society associated to the renovation of the development process. 11. One last factor refers to the need for multilevel intersectoral coordination that, from the territorial point of view, requires the adoption of active public policies to promote innovation and technology. Consideration of this factor is all the more necessary to the extent that innovation policies, by their nature, reject the application of undifferentiated regional strategies and, on the contrary, require different strategies defined on the basis of each type of region or place. Faced with different archetypal regional or local cases (within which there can be pronounced differences of degree), the design of public policy for innovation must be different. This reality adds complexity to the need for multilevel, intrasectoral and intersectoral coordination of public policy, apart from multiplying the demand for it. 12. A consensus emerged from the workshop discussions with regard to the following ideas: Decentralized cooperation and the external projection of territories have a fundamental strategic importance in this process. Local governments can facilitate spaces for the exchange of innovative policies, particularly those based on the use of the new technologies, training, and the management of know how and talent as instruments for institutional reinforcement, in the effort to capture opportunities and increase competitivity. Public administration must orient economic development towards sustainable sectors, favour the construction of ad hoc public private partnerships as a driving force for environmental social innovation and take advantage of the development potential associated to the economy of knowledge and the green economy. 4

5 Cities represent a challenge and at the same time a unique opportunity in the policies relating to climate change. This has become a central objective for local governments, potentially capable of transforming the manner in which the city lives and creating a greater sense of belonging on the part of the citizenry. Technological and social innovations offer a chance to accord a greater role to local governments and redistribute the rendering or regulation of public services among the different levels of administration in the context of intensifying the processes of decentralization and the principle of subsidiarity. In these circumstances, the territorial perspective should be present more than ever on a relevant plane, taking into account the enormous task of political and institutional innovation that public authority, and, in particular, local governments, have ahead of them on all scales. 13. In accordance with the arguments discussed in this Forum, the active promotion of SI processes on the part of local public administration not only opens the possibility of developing original approaches of a strong idiosyncratic character, but also gives incentives for increased and greater participation by the citizenry and organized groups in the search for solutions to great social problems. By their nature, democratic territorial governments are called upon to stimulate SI, dynamically adapting their policies and means of intervention. In order to be sustainable, this task also calls upon the active concourse of other agents and other institutions: that of the specialized agencies of central governments, that of companies, that of the technical, scientific and education media, and that of the organizations of civil society. 14. For territorial administrations, SI is a means for achieving higher ends of government; as such, it is also a tool for promoting social cohesion. The aspiration to live in societies that guarantee their citizens basic levels of social and economic security tends to be constantly fractured by the corrosive action of dynamics of exclusion that trigger off the material and symbolic inequality of individuals, 5

6 undermining their sense of belonging to the community. In recent years, the awareness of the need to combat these dynamics by means of systemic approaches on the part of public policy that seek to propitiate the emergence of positive synergies between economic growth and social equity in a context of productive modernization has grown. Both in Europe and Latin America, some territorial governments have shown innovative experiences in confronting the structural problems holding back the social integration of individuals. Beyond the differences of context, these experiences share the common aim of promoting citizen participation and the occupational integration of excluded sectors into a structure strongly committed to the objective of reinforcing participative democracy. i The bibliographical and documentary references have been omitted in the preparation of this synopsis. ii It is estimated that these factors account for between 50% and 80% of the growth of modern economies. Likewise, it is considered that the difference in technological knowledge and capacity accounts for more than 60% of the differences in income and growth rates between countries. 6

EURO LATIN-AMERICAN DIALOGUE ON SOCIAL COHESION AND LOCAL PUBLIC POLICY BOGOTA AGENDA 2012

EURO LATIN-AMERICAN DIALOGUE ON SOCIAL COHESION AND LOCAL PUBLIC POLICY BOGOTA AGENDA 2012 URBsociAL Bogotá 2012 AGENDA URBsociAL, the Euro-Latin American Dialogue on Social Cohesion and Local Public Policies,