GOLD III Report Basic Services for All in an Urbanizing World

Summary

GOLD III highlights the common challenges that local governments across the world face in balancing the financial sustainability of services with affordability for their residents. It explains how rapid urbanization and demographic and environmental changes are posing radical new challenges to sustainable development, and warns that a failure to address the urban access issue will have serious repercussions for human wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and economic development. However, GOLD III also offers a way forward. It demonstrates that basic service provision is best where empowered local governments have the authority, resources, and capacity to fulfil their responsibilities in service delivery.

Tags

local government cities metropolitan areas subnational government regions de-centralization