Photo: Ken-Livingstone-former-Mayor-of-London

First Parliament of Mayors to convene in October

02 March 2015

by Richard Forster

At a press launch in London today, former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and US Conference of Mayors CEO, Tom Cochran, revealed why they are throwing their weight behind a new body of mayors, which aims to transform global governance.

Ken Livingstone, who set up the C40 (then C20) network of cities when he was Mayor of London, said that national governments had become almost too unwieldy to manage and now were headed by business people, lawyers or PR specialists, who had not run a local council or enjoyed experience of local government and consequently were not best prepared to run something of incredible complexity as national government. He urged mayors to get behind the the concept of a parliament of mayors to achieve better global governance for all.

“This is not a mad power grab by mayors but it is recognising that the delivery of services of the state are much easier to deal with at the local level,” said Livingstone. “Mayors have to see day-to-day that their cities are running and it is time to recognise that we need to restructure governments across the world.”

The idea for a Global Parliament of Mayors was first proposed by Professor Benjamin Barber as a new institution of global governance suited to the demands of the 21st century. At Monday’s launch, Barber unveiled plans for a first meeting of the Parliament in London on 22 October with a second sitting due in Bristol the following day under the stewardship of George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol.

“This is not a proposal to get rid of states or replace the UN but to create an organisation focused on power and legislation and the right to govern,” said Professor Benjamin Barber, founder of the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM). “We believe that cities have not just a responsibility to govern together but also a right to do that. They have a right to govern across borders and a right to an organisation to do it.”

In 2013, Barber caused a stir with the release of his book If Mayors Ruled the World even if its messages resounded more heavily with conference producers and at university debates rather than with mayors themselves. Following the book’s appearance, Barber popped up at a series of events to promote his ideas that mayors are much better placed than national governments to intervene in 21st century matters such as climate change, green growth and global security. The final chapter of his book called for a new form of governance institution, a parliament of mayors, to take over from the nation states and provide a better means of government for citizens globally.

Two years later, while the conference opportunities may have stopped, this is for good reason. Barber is now spending his time touring, not as a guest speaker, but as a leader of a movement, which mayors are starting to embrace.

A meeting hosted by the Mayor of Amsterdam last September attracted the mayors of the Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht as well as mayors and representatives from across Europe and the United States. Barber says the mayors of Athens, Warsaw, Palermo, Seattle, Tijuana, Seoul, Rio, Boston and Barcelona are supporting the launch and are looking to sign a manifesto at the first parliament.

One of the more surprising attendees in Amsterdam was impresario Harvey Goldsmith, famous for mounting rock shows for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Queen, who is now planning an event for mayors called Tomorrow’s Cities, which will focus on how capital, science and policy can holistically change cities. He was present to support this week’s London launch alongside Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of the US Conference of Mayors (USCM), who came on board with the Global Parliament of Mayors’ project after inviting Barber to address US mayors this January at the Winter Meeting held by USCM in Washington DC.

Cochran explained how the US Conference of Mayors had emerged when 12 mayors got together at the time of the Great Depression and how 80 years later it has developed into an important voice for the US President and national governments.

“If national governments cannot agree on the challenges we face, we remind all that through this GPM collaboration, we will go forward, as mayors do every day, to meet these challenges for our people and for cities around the world,” said Cochran.

There are many questions which still need to be solved–should the unelected mayors of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht have a right to govern through such a parliament? Who is paying for this if the GPM itself has no funding? Is this just another layer of bureaucracy? Has anyone asked the people being governed what they think?–but Barber says much of this will be deliberated and decided in October by the mayors themselves.  Cities Today will carry a full interview with Professor Barber in the next issue of the magazine as well as an analysis of the legal validity for the proposed Parliament.

There is no doubt of the value of bringing cities together to exchange experience and share knowledge as Ken Livingstone made clear. “I didn’t think up the congestion charge, I stole it from Singapore,” remarked the former mayor of London.

But on the point that this is yet another network for cities and there are already others that are representing cities on the climate change agenda, GPM enthusiasts are keen to point out this new network is seeking a very different mandate and will not replicate or take away from the existing city networks such as C40, UCLG and ICLEI.

“There are other organisations pushing in the same direction in the lead up to the Paris COP–ICLEI, EUROCITIES, Energy Cities–and we are all coordinating to make quite sure as city organisations that we are endorsing statements rather than competing on statements,” said George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, a city which is already active in EUROCITIES and ICLEI.

Ferguson is organising a special train from London to Bristol to bring mayors from one parliament session to the next. The Mayor of Bristol’s next stop for the Global Parliament of Mayors is to attend the Nobel Laureates’ Climate Symposium in April in Hong Kong where a draft climate manifesto will be developed for discussion and deliberation at the inaugural parliament in October.

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