We’re working to make public-private partnership more sustainable
The forum, which lasted for three days and was organised in collaboration with Barcelona City Council’s 2030 Agenda, featured talks, chats and three face-to-face tours.
This week saw Barcelona playing host, with support from the City Council, to the 6th International Public-Private Partnership Forum (PPP) which brought together representatives from governments, the private sector and civil society organisations to discuss “The role of public-private associations that prioritise people for Sustainable Development Goals when providing a sustainable infrastructure for accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda”.
The IESE’s ‘PPP for Cities’ is a project that researches and advises authorities on the planning, management and implementation of public-private partnership projects for transforming cities. It was responsible for organising the conference, together with Barcelona City Council’s 2030 Agenda and under the supervision of the lecturer Joan Enric Ricart and the executive director of ‘PPP for Cities’, Alicia Plana.
Three core elements
During the event’s opening session, those in charge of the organiser institutions agreed on the importance of the forum’s three core elements: sustainable infrastructures, public-private partnerships and prioritisation of people. Taking part in the opening session was Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor, Laia Bonet, who underscored the importance of the third core element: “We are responsible for putting people at the front and centre of our policies and business models”. She likewise asserted that public-private institutions were a means of achieving this goal: “The pandemic has demonstrated this transformational capacity”, she stated, in reference to the collaboration of the public and private sectors during the health crisis. The 2030 Agenda Commissioner Miquel Rodríguez also took part in the conference as Barcelona City Council’s representative.
The conference was held for three days during which two dozen sessions were held on issues that included climate change, the circular economy, digital transformation, sustainable funding, green procurement and the blue economy, and how these issues could be tackled through public-private associations that prioritise people. The conference gave priority to practice through case studies from around the world seeking to comply with the UN’s SDGs and the environmental, social and governance principles (ESG). These initials stand for ‘Environmental Social Governance’, which could be seen as another way of saying Socially Responsible Investment.
Visits to companies
In addition to its ordinary Full City Council meetings, Barcelona City Council organised three visits this Thursday, 5 May, which enabled participants to find out about the applications and infrastructure projects in operation in the Barcelona area. The visits were to Districlima, the urban heating and cooling network, the TRAM public transport network and TERSA, the waste and renewable energies management plant.
