1 May 2018: The Sustainable Development Solution Network’s (SDSN) Local Data Action Solutions Initiative (LDA-SI) has awarded five micro-grants to support local data innovations related to indicator localization, data platforms, third party data and national-local data integration. The Initiative aims to inform sub-national SDG data efforts around the world through the dissemination of lessons learned.

The five micro-grantees are out of Aruba, Brazil, Colombia, India and the US. In Aruba, the Wolfs Company will create a framework and an online data dashboard to track land and marine ecological and socioeconomic indicators related to the SDGs. The model aims to develop a replicable methodology for tracking ecosystem services to support SDG achievement, particularly for small island developing States (SIDS). The model builds on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and existing SDG analyses.

In Brazil, the Metropolitan SDG Observatory (METRODS) and Nossa BH Movement are collaborating with the Metropolitan Agency of Belo Horizonte, Newton Paiva University and other partners to collect data and analyze 80 indicators related to SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area. The initiative will work to develop a long-term tool that civil society can use to understand development conditions and monitor their priorities as well as inform political decision-making and development investment. This approach will support broader learning related to SDG 11 by developing a model for including marginalized and peripheral areas into wider metropolitan analyses and supporting reduction of inequalities through data collection, analysis and dissemination.

In Colombia, the Como Vamos City Network (CVCN) and Fundacion Corona, with the support of Columbia University graduate students, are developing a public, online tool to track sub-national SDG indicators for over 35 municipalities, an area that covers more than 40 percent of Colombia’s population. The tool aims to create a common set of sub-national indicators and enable citizens to learn about, track and monitor SDG progress at the local level.

In India, the Community System Foundation’s OpenCities Institute and the city of Punjab will create an indicator framework to measure municipal human development objectives across sectors. The project builds on previous work in Punjab to connect road safety indicators with the SDGs and aims to set a precedent for using the SDGs to frame development priorities across sectors by encouraging the city to inclusively define human development challenges that have not been addressed through traditional planning.

In the US, the City of Los Angeles is collaborating with Occidental College to explore how to incorporate the SDGs into the city’s budgets, plans, projects and partnerships. Through the initiative, the city will map key sectors and stakeholders to local targets and indicators and promote broader learning around how cities can adapt global indicators to the local level.

In late 2018, each grantee will produce a learning brief on the methodology they used. The briefs will help other locations replicate and adapt the approaches. [SDSN Press Release] [LDA-SI Webpage]