The report finds that while countries in the region have attempted to integrate the SDGs into national strategies and development policies, “efforts at the subnational level tend to adopt national priorities without critical appraisal of their relevance to the needs and opportunities specific to the local context”.

To address this gap, the guidelines suggest concrete actions to integrate the SDGs in subnational and local planning to meet local needs and to ensure that the ‘leave no one behind’ principle is duly taken into account. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have published a set of guidelines to support local authorities and relevant stakeholders in their efforts to localize the SDGs in subnational development planning and budgeting. The report includes a step-by-step toolkit for SDG localization and a checklist to facilitate its operationalization and implementation.

The report titled, ‘SDG Localization in Europe and Central Asia: Guidelines to Support Subnational Development Planning and Budgeting,’ provides an overview of decentralization and subnational decision making in Europe and Central Asia and offers examples of pilot initiatives to localize the SDGs in the region and beyond.

The report defines SDG localization as “the process of taking into account subnational contexts in the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, from the setting of goals and targets to determining the means of implementation and using indicators to measure and monitor progress.” Localization, it notes, relates to the SDGs as a framework for local development policy, as well as to actions local and regional governments can take to mainstream the Goals in local development planning documents and support their achievement.

The report finds that while countries in the region have attempted to integrate the SDGs into national strategies and development policies, “efforts at the subnational level tend to adopt national priorities without critical appraisal of their relevance to the needs and opportunities specific to the local context.”

To address this gap, the guidelines suggest concrete actions to integrate the SDGs in subnational and local planning to meet local needs and to ensure that the ‘leave no one behind’ (LNOB) principle is duly taken into account. The recommended step-by-step approach involves local stakeholders at every stage and includes:

An inception phase based on stakeholder engagement;
Situational analysis to prioritize development directions and solutions;
Institutional analysis and strengthening governance;
Formulation of a development planning document;
Planning for implementation;
Data and indicator selection and development; and
Monitoring and accountability.
The report was published on 26 October 2023. READ further from the source above