Sustainable development is possible when all citizens in every country have the right to participate, the possibility to express their opinion about their country’s development and can influence issues that affect their daily lives. A combination of top-down and bottom-up flows of information is crucial both for democratic decision-making and to be able to adapt development initiatives to lived realities. It is therefore important to involve local communities, governments, civil society organizations, and other relevant stakeholders in the process of localising the SDGs. This helps ensure that the goals and targets are relevant and meaningful to the local context and that there is buy-in and ownership from the community. You certainly recognise this line of reasoning from planning your ICLD project.
Localising the SDGs requires the collaboration and support of multiple stakeholders, including governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, and international organizations. Building partnerships and collaborations through all steps of the work can help leverage resources and expertise to achieve the SDGs. Engaging with citizens in the process can also create opportunities to stimulate citizen action.
Watch this 3-minute video of how local governments can partner with their local communities to identify needs for inclusive cities.
Which SDGs does this video relate to?
Most intuitively, accessibility and inclusivity in urban planning relate to SDG 10 for equality and SDG 11 for sustainable cities. Since accessibility is a precondition to access workplaces, schools and other places in which life in a city takes place, it is also feeding into SDG 3 on access to education, and SDG 5 on gender equality, because of gendered responsibilities of childcare and errands.
Stakeholder can be anyone who has a particular interest in the issue at hand. They may be beneficiaries of an intended change, negatively affected by the current situation, or benefit from the current situation and therefore stand in the way of change. They may or may not have direct power over the issue. Many times, it is your role as a democratic representative to empower target communities to impact a policy or solution by providing space for voice, participation and agency.
Sometimes the obstacle to implementing a project is tangible, but sometimes it is structural norms – there may be deep-rooted resistance to change, connected to practices and norms which are perceived as completely normal in a given context. Who are the guardians of these obstructing norms? They may be relevant to the likelihood of successful project implementation.
If you are working on any kind of change project, review your stakeholder analysis. Connecting your issues to SDG targets, and perhaps even indicators, may help you with this. What groups may have an interest either in driving the change or in slowing it down? Who has power – and who does not? Who might be affected by the problem and is not heard by those in charge?
Tips! The following policy brief shows an example from the African continent, where researchers have disaggregated community data to highlight the barriers to participation which people living with disabilites in Zimbabwe face. It gives a good indication of stakeholder groups and the importance of their participation. /https://icld.se/publikationer/chazovachii-et-al-2022-overcoming-barriers-to-participate-in-local-democracy-for-people-with-disabilities-the-case-of-zimbabwe/