SDG localising tool: Localising and measuring Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in cities and regions

Theme: Sustainable development

Scope

On 25 September 2015 the General Assembly of the UN adopted the resolution “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”. This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity and presents 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets as a means to stimulate action toward 2030 in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet.

The need to localise the goals through bottom-up action in order to reflect differences across regions and communities has been acknowledged. Therefore, local and regional governments are identified as important partners in localising the SDGs.

This ESPON activity has been asked to support local and regional governments to play their role in localising the SDGs. This they will do by contributing to the development and accessibility of indicators and tools to localise the SDGs and to measure progress of the SDGs in regions and reflect differences across regions and communities in Europe.

Main Objective

The main objective of this service is to support local and regional governments to play their role in localising the SDGs by developing a web application. This web application should make regional data and indicators related to the SDGs accessible for local, regional and national governments. One of the sources for the regional data and indicators is the ESPON regional database making available results of ESPON projects so that the SDG localising tool is at the same time a way to disseminate ESPON results.

Users of the tool should at least be able to use the tool as follows:

• Local and regional government should be able to use the tool to assess their progress towards the SDGs, to compare their profile with other regions and to find communities and/or regions in Europe that can serve as suitable examples for achieving progress towards the SDGs.

• National governments should be able to use the tool to identify regions that are lagging and leading on different SDGs and to find regions and communities that with some targeted support could improve their progress and thus contribute substantially to the national progress on the SDGs.

Main outcomes envisaged

The main outcomes of the service should be:

• Web application, including an administrator module, that can be used in a simple, intuitive and user-friendly way by governments at all levels to find their peers or to find the biggest gaps;

• User guidance explaining why and how to use the SDG localising tool including some practical examples;
• Administrator guidance on how to keep the tool up-to-date.

Contractors

• Technopolis Group, FR (lead contractor)
• Web Architecture and Technologies (WAAT Ltd), UK
• Social Progress Imperative (SPI), USA

Observers

• European Commission - Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG Regio)
• European Committee of the Regions (CoR)
• Eurostat - Statistical office of the European Union
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
• United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Budget: € 113.800.00

Lifetime: September 2019 – September 2020

Deliveries

• Inception delivery, 8 November 2019
• Interim delivery, 10 February 2020
• Draft Final delivery, 10 July 2020
• Final delivery, 10 September 2020

Contact: Marjan van Herwijnen (Senior Project Expert) [email protected] and Caroline Clause (Senior Financial Expert) [email protected]