Overview

Several Local Government Associations ( LGAs) have been implementing successful projects for the localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in cooperation with their member cities, some are just getting started and some others have a good understanding of the Agenda 2030 but have not yet formal ideas of how its implementation could look like as a project in their LGA.

31 experts from 16 local government associations joined the Connective Cities virtual dialogue event on LGAs and their role in localising the SDGs on 1st, 2nd and 4th September 2020.

The participants from Albania, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, Nepal, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Mozambique, Palestinian territories, Serbia, Tanzania and Turkey as well as from the event partners PLATFORMA, UCLG and its Capacity and Institution Building (CIB) working group secretariat presented their good practices on localising the SDGs and supported each other in the peer-to-peer consultation sessions focusing on local challenges and in the development of joint project ideas in this thematic area.

Keynotes

Boris Tonhauser, PLATFORMA

Local Government Associations and their role in localising the SDGs: a European perspective

Sara Hoeflich de Duque, UCLG

The role of local and regional governments and their associations in Localizing the SDGs: an international perspective

Results

The virtual event provided a platform to showcase in detail a great variety of inspiring projects and to exchange on very concrete local challenges on the role of LGAs in the localisation of the SDGs.

Several challenges have proven to be common for LGAs in several countries such as the need to convince local leaders of the importance of the SDGs to enable municipalities to start with their localisation or the lack of local data to monitor the Agenda 2030 at the local level. 

As a result of the event, four project ideas were elaborated. Three of these project ideas have a national focus and one was a joint endeavour, which was the result of a joint need of several LGAs and that should result in a standard format that could be applied by several LGAs in different countries:

• Nepali SDGs Portal for municipalities
• Creating a regional forum for functional cooperation and engagement for local governments and State Ministries on promoting regional integration through local economic growth and development for sustainability in East Africa
• Develop and implement an SDG mayor’s involvement strategy in Brazil
• Develop a welcome package on SDGs work for municipalities (joint project of several participating LGAs)

The project ideas will be offered further exchange support by Connective Cities.