The City is adapting its Agenda 21 by adopting a new sustainability strategy. It is one of the first municipalities in Switzerland to act along the lines of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda.
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Among the hundreds of lines of action is the promotion of biodiversity. Even in town, the embankments along the roads are home to many species of flowers.
FRÉDÉRIC RAVUSSIN
Simple coincidence of the calendar, the City of Yverdon unveiled its new sustainability strategy Thursday morning, the day after the presentation of the Canton Climate Plan. By being one of the first municipalities in Switzerland to follow on its scale the 17 global sustainability objectives that the United Nations defined in their 2030 Agenda, Yverdon is thus one of the pioneers of the country, as it had already been in adopting in 2001 an Agenda 21.
“It was important to take another look at this problem of the future, the consequences and concerns that our consumption can have on the climate and the environment,” said the trustee, Jean-Daniel Carrard. It is therefore with a view to continuous improvement and resilience, reinforced by the current global health crisis, that Yverdon adopts such a strategy to be read as objectives to be achieved by 2030.
“We are in the XXIe century and Yverdon must continue to be sustainable “
At the same time, the name Agenda 21 disappears in favor of “Yverdon-les-Bains durable”. “This change is there to mark a turning point and remove the notion of temporality linked to the previous name. Now we are in the XXIe century and Yverdon must continue to be sustainable ”, explains the municipal of Culture and Sustainability, Carmen Tanner.
The new local strategy should be seen as a compass guiding the administration’s projects. It was built through the project “Your city, your ideas for sustainable development”, a participatory process which involved the municipal administration and the population. “We are delighted with its result, which has enabled us to collect some 260 ideas and 15 projects,” notes the Delegate for Sustainability, Silli Mona. The hundred or so lines of action that follow embrace the 17 objectives adopted in 2015 by the United Nations at the New York Summit.
Some axes already “active”
We find in particular the realization of a diagnosis of the risks linked to global warming, the support to local trade, the preservation of biodiversity, the promotion of soft mobility or even, in urban planning terms, the wish to make outdoor spaces suitable for use and friendly for everyone. “Some of these axes are already” active “, specifies Carmen Tanner, like the subsidies that we grant on the purchase of electric bikes.”
This new impetus delighted the socialist communal councilor Pascale Fischer. “We are thrilled, because what we are seeing here is the fruit of three years of negotiations which we can easily imagine was not easy to pick. Certainly, this tool is not as courageous as that of the Canton, but I consider it a huge victory. ”
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