São Paulo – The city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, will boost its internationalization process by participating in a project funded by the European Union. Entitled “Alliance of Local Latin American Authorities for Internationalization and Decentralized Cooperation,” the program will enable seven Latin American cities to converse with one another and exchange experiences in order to devise their internationalization plans.
The European Union has launched a call for tender for the project, and Mexico City, the Mexican capital, submitted a bid alongside the city halls and municipalities of Lima, in Peru, Quito, in Ecuador, Medellin, in Colombia, Morón, in Argentina, Montevideo, in Uruguay, and Belo Horizonte, in Brazil. They will receive 1.49 million euros to implement the proposal over a 30-month period. The amount will cover 90% of the project’s full cost.
According to the international cooperation and fundraising advisor to the Belo Horizonte Joint Municipal International Relations Secretariat, Stephania Aleixo de Paula e Silva, knowledge exchange workshops will be held in each of the cities. In Mexico City, for instance, the theme will be the legal and institutional framework. In Morón, social inclusion will be discussed, and in Belo Horizonte, the focus will be on sustainability. The goal is always to show how each area should be arranged in order for the municipalities to be internationalized.
Belo Horizonte is not hosting the sustainability debate by mere chance. The mayor of the city, Marcio Araujo de Lacerda, was the worldwide representative of mayors during Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainability, which took place in Rio de Janeiro last June, and this year Belo Horizonte has also hosted the meeting of the global association Local Governments for Sustainability (Iclei), during preparations for the Rio+20.
The joint municipal International Relations secretary, Rodrigo Perpétuo, explains that sustainability is in fact one the areas in which Belo Horizonte is most known internationally, especially from the perspective of broader sustainability, which includes not only the environmental aspect, but also poverty eradication. According to him, the municipality maintains several important environmental actions, such as waste recycling with an advanced relationship with garbage collections, and recovery of river sources.
He highlights the City Hall’s favela urbanization program which is working with five different regions. One of them, Aglomerado da Serra, with a population of 60,000, for instance, was disconnected from the city, but an avenue was built and the situation changed. Public services were also implemented, including a healthcare centre, children’s schools, and green areas and river springs were cleaned and protected, among other actions.
Perpétuo says the European Union’s project enables Belo Horizonte to exchange experiences with cities with an even greater international policy tradition than itself, such as Medellin and Montevideo. According to the secretary, the internationalization plan Belo Horizonte will formulate will “converse” with the municipality’s strategic planning, whose deadline is in 2030.
Belo Horizonte already has a strong international presence and participates in various organizations, such as the World Association of Major Metropolises (Metropolis), the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the International Association of Educating Cities, the Ibero-American Strategic Urban Development Centre, and the Iclei. Internationalization work in Belo Horizonte takes place in several areas, among them cooperation, marketing and investment attraction.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
