What has Belo Horizonte learnt from the PB International Seminar?
Ana Luiza Nabuco: We wanted to enlarge the debate about PB and to improve the exchange of experiences among cities. As you can see, we have cities from all over the world represented here at the PB International Seminar, which are reinforcing instruments for popular participation, including PB. World interest in PB is impressive and has intensified in the last few years. While PB was, during the nineties, restricted to left wing governments and poor countries, today it has spread worldwide. There are rich and developed countries adopting PB such as the UK, Spain, Italy and others. On the other hand, in Latin America – and especially in Brazil – PB is usually implemented and reinforced when left wing parties come to power. So, our main hope was to enlarge our network, and to strength PB. At the end of last year, Belo Horizonte proposed the creation of a Brazilian PB Network of 27 cities, coordinated by Belo Horizonte, as a mechanism to strengthen PB and to improve communication about it
