ICLEI was founded on the belief that cities are the nucleus for a change towards sustainable development. Although today we have the globally agreed upon Sustainable Development Goals, the debate about what is considered to be sustainable is not concluded. It is obvious that there is an underlying question or even conflict about the access and share of available and ultimately limited resources. There are no easy answers to this question and how to come to social peace or fairness globally, nationally, or locally. A quite popular answer in this discussion is the concept of (social) justice. Another approach is the notion of the common good.
ICLEI strongly supports this development and has embarked on pioneering activities that we want to highlight in this article - because even before ICLEI was founded, it was made clear that the future can only be “Our Common Future” and human conduct needs rules and norms to be guided in the right direction.