Towards Evidence-Based Decision-Making For Cities In Bahrain; Capacity Building Workshop On Urban Observatories And City Prosperity Initiative

Global and Regional Commitments Since pledging commitment to the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Bahrain has been acting towards the integration of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals into its national development plans and strategies. It has also committed to the New Urban Agenda on October 2016 in Quito by which United Nations Member States agreed on a mechanism and implementation tool to advance sustainability at the city level. At the regional level, Bahrain, as member of the League of Arab States, has endorsed the Arab Strategy for Housing and Urban Development 2030 as a guiding framework to implement the New Urban Agenda in the region. Since then, it has been engaged, in partnership with the UN in building national awareness among the public and key stakeholders of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular, Goal 11 of “Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. National Context Bahrain Country Program (2019- 2022) vision is “Sustainable Economic and Social Security within the context of a financial balance”. The Country Program focusses on fundamental principles that include justice, competitiveness and sustainability, achieving fiscal balance between government revenue and expenditure by 2022 along with sustainable development. Furthermore, the Government Program of work indicates that the infrastructure will be developed to support sustainable development, positive economic growth, enhanced partnership with the private sector and continue to develop the roads and sewage networks, enhanced infrastructure of the energy, water, clean energy and efficiency and sustainability of services provided.For the environment and resources, the promotion of environmental protection and sustainability, improved efficiency of use and consumption of resources and energy and the promotion of production and use of renewable energy and investment will be prompted.  To enhance the government performance, it will focus in raising both the efficiency and effectiveness of all the government sectors and increasing its employee’s productivity as well as encouraging creativity, knowledge and innovation and strengthen transparency, quality control and accountability along with improving their strategic planning while ensuring follow up of performance in all public institutions.  On base of the goals mentioned above, the KoB government has developed its working plan for the coming four years (2019-2022).Political and institutional framework The Bahraini government aims to pursue its 2019-2022 goals through the 3 government main priorities as follows;Firstly; the promotion of the society and state’s principles;Secondly; achieving sustainable finance and economic development;Thirdly; securing the right environment that support sustainable development.For that, the government strives to improve its strategic planning and follow up government performance through: