Street view of downtown Medellín (photo: Iván Erre Jota/Flickr.com)
few countries in Africa (Benin, Kenya, and Togo) and Asia (Indonesia and Korea). Ultimately, despite some positive results, even the more optimistic data on SDG ownership, awareness at the local level, and alignment with national and local plans, should be read with caution.
5.2 INCORPORATION OF THE SDGS IN NATIONAL AND LOCAL POLICIES AND STRATEGIES In their efforts to support the implementation of the SDGs, many countries are making significant progress in revising their strategic priorities, adapting them to the SDGs, and mainstreaming the goals into their national plans and institutional frameworks. One weakness of the otherwise successful Millennium Development Goals, in fact, was a systematic lack of alignment between the agenda and national development plans. Many countries are specifically working to avoid this pitfall in their work to implement the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. The ways they have approached this issue have been very diverse. The VNRs provide, to a certain extent, a measurement – weighed by contexts and their different institutional realities – of the responsibilities and tasks that LRGs are expected to undertake for the implementation of the SDGs. Certain countries consider LRGs as key policy actors given their enhanced responsibilities and their proximity to the territory and their communities (e.g., Sweden and Nigeria). Others (e.g., Ethiopia) treat local government’s level as mere ‘implementation agents’. In many countries, finally, where administrative structures are traditionally more centralized, local and regional governments are hardly mentioned in the process. Several countries have revised their existing national sustainable development strategies, putting increased emphasis on social and economic dimensions of plans that had previously had an environmental focus.21 Other countries have developed brand new action plans aiming at the implementation of the 2030 Agenda,22 or integrated specific SDGs into their policies and strategies.23 Most countries, and several less developed countries in particular, have been adapting their development plans and strategic visions to the SDGs.24
21 This group of countries could include Estonia, Finland, Germany, Montenegro, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland. 22 See for instance the examples of China and Norway. 23 In the Netherlands, for example. 24 This larger group of countries includes Bangladesh, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
29