The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide “a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet.” While the goals were designed to provide a nonbinding vision to guide policymaking at the national level, such a massive agenda requires stakeholders at all levels of government and society, including cities, collaborate to achieve the intended outcomes. This participation is more urgent given that the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network found that no country is on track to meeting all the goals by 2030.
https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/report_global-goals-global-cities_190923.pdf
Hartley, Kris. (2019). “Global Goals, Global Cities: Achieving the SDGs through collective local action.” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Cities have a crucial role to play in translating the high-level, ambitious, and multidimensional vision of the SDGs into practice through local policies—that is, localization.
This report serves as a resource to help policymakes better understand the opportunities, challenges, and complexities facing cities and their strategic stakeholders in advancing the SDGs. The report:
- Outlines the unique strengths of cities in implementing the goals, given their administrative flexibility, capacity to engage directly with citizens, access to city networks and collaborations, and an increasing amount of city-level guidance
- Highlights efforts to advance the SDGs through city diplomacy, public–private partnerships, and empowering youth and other local actors
- Recognizes the challenges cities need to overcome, such as insufficient fiscal capacity, ineffective governance, poorly regulated public–private partnerships, data-related issues, the need for complex physical infrastructure, and difficulty navigating global engagement
- Recommends that cities continue to stimulate progress by building smart capacity, embracing a comprehensive view of knowledge, and engaging and networking strategically
In an era of dire warnings and systemic crises, the SDGs are currently the best embodiment of global collective agreement about the urgency to move forward. Cities are essential to achieving results, and they need to build on the current momentum propelling their initiatives and strategies forward.