3 mins
Localising SDG goals
In 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ as a follow-up to the Millennium Development Goals. The agenda sets targets for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with 169 concrete targets and 232 indicators, representing an integrated framework in which each of the goals is indivisible.
ESPON’s SDG localising tool – localising and measuring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in cities and regions – offers hands-on support to regional and national policymakers and citizens alike in terms of localising and achieving the SDGs. This simple, intuitive and user-friendly tool helps policy-makers turn a large volume of indicators into insights, providing answers to questions such as:
Is my region making progress towards achieving the SDG targets?
Is my region lagging behind or leading in achieving SDGs compared with other similar regions?
From which regions in Europe can I draw inspiration to progress towards achieving the SDGs?
Which regions would benefit from targeted support to help step up actions to improve their progress and thus contribute substantially to the national progress towards achieving the SDGs?
To support policy-makers, the tool tracks progress along multiple periods in time, displays the distance to achieving targets by indicator and benchmarks similar regions to showcase and compare the SDGs by several criteria:
population density
urban-Rural
income criteria
metropolitan regions
regions in the same country
regions with similar results
For instance, let’s assume that Catalonia wants to diagnose and monitor its performance towards achieving SDG 4 ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’.
Catalonia may also choose to benchmark itself against regions with similar population densities (regions between 212 and 410 persons per square kilometre), predominantly urban regions and regions with a similar income (developed regions with GDP per capita of over 90% of the EU average). This combination of criteria for benchmark regions gives 17 regions similar to Catalonia.
One of the functionalities of the SDG localising tool is that it produces a map that displays regions’ performance for each SDG, for separate indicators and as a composite view.
The composite aggregates the performance of the following indicators:
early leavers from education and training by sex; tertiary educational attainment, age group 25–64 by sex;
employment rates of young people not in education and training;
participation rates of selected age groups in education.
The three leading regions in this example are Gloucestershire, Cheshire and Stockholm, followed by Catalonia. The top performer in Europe for this composite indicator is the Inner London – West region.
The SDG localising tool embeds a progress tracker over a time of two periods, 2011–2013 and 2014–2016. Catalonia appears to have decreased by approximately 20% in terms of ‘early leavers from education and training’ and increased by approximately 13% for the indicator ‘tertiary educational attainment’. It has also increased the ‘employment rates of young people’ by 4%. ‘Participation rates in education’ remained stable.
Another functionality provided by the SDG localising tool is a display of regions’ distance to achieving the targets associated with each indicator using a radar plot (Figure 2). In addition to visualising the distance to the targets, the radar plot also benchmarks regions in two ways: among the regions and visà-vis the median of the benchmark group.
The regional benchmarking exercise shows that Catalonia performs above the group median in terms of ‘tertiary educational attainment’ and slightly below the median in terms of the ‘employment rates of young people’. Catalonia meets the target for ‘participation rates in education’.
This is a first version of the SDG localising tool, and there is room for improvements. Future developments could take into account the ongoing research and development of novel indicators relevant to the 17 SDGs and the European regions, and update the indicator selection in a timely manner. They could also account for future methodological work on the setting of targets for each indicator and update targets according to quantified European or international targets.
The SDG localising tool aims to support regional governments in all countries participating in the ESPON 2020 cooperation programme in their work to include the SDGs in local development plans. This is considered an important factor for fully attaining the goals of the 2030 agenda and ensuring that serious action is taken to address the individual development challenges.
More information on the methodology and progress of the project can be found here: https://www.espon.eu/localise- SDG.