In many other countries, however, local and regional governments have not been fully involved in the consultation and drafting processes. A few national reviews did mention national or regional fora or workshops as participation channels, but several of them targeted civil society in particular (e.g., El Salvador, Jordan, the Republic of Korea and Uruguay) and the participation of local governments remained marginal or limited to a narrow group of municipalities and cities, to the extent that national associations perceived that they had not been adequately included in the consultation (e.g., in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Indonesia, and Uruguay). In certain cases, finally, the conditions and requirements to participate – deadlines to submit documents and reports to be included in the review, for example – were so constraining that they curbed the participation of LRGs and their associations (e.g., in Portugal). Consultation processes deemed inadequate, contested or fragmented or with an insufficient representation of local governments are ranked as ‘weak’ (light green in the map). This approach had consequences for the public stance of LRGs and their associations: in France, for example, several associations wrote to the government criticizing the lack of consideration of local governments and their particular experiences and practices in national reviews; in Indonesia and Turkey, associations stated overtly that they had not been involved at all in the process; in the Philippines, local governments received, through the associations gathered within the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), governmental ‘briefings’, but were not involved in an actual dialogue. In a few other cases, due to either the weakness or the lack of a national association of local governments, it was not possible to verify whether actual cooperation occurred, and to what extent (e.g., Bangladesh). Some countries recognized that the participation of sub-national governments required the creation of adequate participation channels, and that this process was still at a fledgling stage (as in Argentina). Others relied on local governments’ participation at a later stage of the process (e.g., Georgia). Finally, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central and South-East Asia, many countries have neither involved nor mentioned local governments at all (marked in red in the map), and the reviewing process has remained fully centralized. The 19 countries that have not involved LRGs in the consultation but do mention them as part of the overall picture of SDG implementation in their countries, however, have been marked in light yellow in the map.
5.1.2 The role of LRG associations and networks in awareness-raising and ownership The role of LRG associations and networks has so far been decisive to improve outreach to, and the mobilization of, local and regional governments. Within the framework of their activities, congresses and national fora, many associations have organized political debates on the SDGs. In Brazil, for example, 7,000 local elected officials participated in the national congress of the National Confederation of Brazilian Municipalities (CNM). In Germany, the national association has drafted a charter to express the support of local governments to the process of SDG implementation (see Box 1), while one in every five Flemish municipalities has signed the Global Goals, Local Focus declaration, sponsored by the regional association of local governments, VVSG. In the Netherlands, the national association has involved LRGs via a number of dedicated campaigns (e.g., the Municipalities4GlobalGoals campaign, see also
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