By Fernando Ortiz-Moya, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)

The conversation around the SDGs has turned pessimistic. Report after report shows that we are off track. By 2030, only a few of the 169 targets comprising the SDGs will be achieved. Most of them will remain unmet. The COVID-19 pandemic, increasing climate-related disasters, international conflicts, the rising cost of living, and major upheavals in the geopolitical landscape are to blame for disrupting action and slowing down progress.

But while the numbers paint a bleak picture, there’s more to the story. The SDGs have sparked something deeper: new ways of thinking about development, new governance structures, strengthened public participation, and a refocused attention on those who might otherwise have been left behind. And nowhere has this been more evident than at the local level.

Cities have played a bigger role than the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development anticipated. It is worth remembering that the SDGs were designed with national governments in mind. The Goals and targets that serve as a compass to direct action as well as the indicators structuring the process to follow up and review progress respond to national capacities, and are centred on countries. But in reality, cities are responsible for most of the actual implementation of the Goals, with some accounts highlighting that at least two-thirds of SDG targets have a local dimension.

The bottom-up emergence of Voluntary Local Reviews, or VLRs for short, responded to the discrepancy between the nation-centric design of the SDGs and the need for local implementation. Originally, VLRs helped cities to monitor and evaluate their efforts in achieving the SDGs, in a similar fashion to national governments and their Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). But as cities begun conducting their local reviews, VLRs evolved into a process that guides their sustainability strategies. Between 2018 and 2023, more than 200 cities have issued at least one VLR report.

More importantly, VLRs allow cities to anchor local actions to the SDGs. In conducting a VLR, cities take the global aspirations of the SDGs and adapt them to their unique contexts, challenges, and development priorities. In my recent work, I have explored six diverse cities – Agadir (Morocco), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Fatih (Turkey), Rottemburg am Neckar (Germany), Tokyo (Japan), and Vantaa (Finland) – to uncover how they are implementing the SDGs locally.

These six cities have integrated the principles of the SDGs into their overarching strategies as well as into sectoral and smaller-scale projects. The VLR process helped these cities to understand their development efforts in light of the SDGs, allowing them to identify areas of progress as well as policy blind spots hindering the achievement of certain SDGs or targets. The process also creates a follow-up and review framework linking local data and indicators to the global aspirations of the SDGs. It is through the VLR process that cities can connect their past work and ongoing efforts to the SDGs while simultaneously being future oriented: setting a vision to become the most sustainable version of themselves by 2030, addressing existing challenges, identifying weaknesses and strengths, and walking down a path that leaves no one behind.

The city of Agadir implements the SDGs as part of its core policy. The city has embedded the SDGs into its main policy instruments, including the Urban Development Programme 2020-2024 and the Municipal Action Plan 2022-2027. By weaving the SDGs into every policy, Agadir puts sustainable development at its core.

The redevelopment of Buenos Aires’ riverside along the Río de la Plata advances an inclusive and environmentally sustainable approach to urban planning. Through a number of projects, Buenos Aires is reimagining its relationship with its coast by creating new green and public spaces as well as a new beach. While this initiative has a direct positive impact on SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), and SDG 15 on (life on land), its prospective benefits extend to all Goals.

Located at the heart of Istanbul, Fatih Municipality proposes an additional SDG in its VLR. The new SDG 18 on culture and heritage responds to the challenges of achieving sustainable development in a historically rich context. It is a city that is visited by large number of tourists, and as such, it needs the preservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

Initiative N! in Rottenburg am Neckar is a platform bringing together a wide range of stakeholders seeking to improve the town’s well-being and promoting sustainable development. Initiative N! advises the mayor in matters related to the SDGs while simultaneously organizing awareness-raising activities.

Tokyo conceived its ‘Future Tokyo: Tokyo’s Long-Term Strategy’ as the instrument articulating the city’s work on the SDGs. Future Tokyo will become a reality through 20+1 strategies encompassing 122 projects. Each strategy advances several SDGs, leveraging synergies between Goals. Tokyo’s ambition to become carbon neutral by 2050 extends beyond fighting climate change. Its efforts touch on everything from clean energy (SDG 7) to public health (SDG 3) and biodiversity (SDG 15).

Vantaa has also embedded the SDGs into its ‘Vantaa City Strategy 2022-2025.’ The Strategy articulates local development across five strategic themes, each of them aligned with concrete Goals. The Strategy identifies four cross-cutting SDGs – SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 13 (climate action), SDG 16 (peace, justice and strong institutions), and SDG 17 (partnerships for the Goals) – that span the five themes’ boundaries. This approach ensures that local actions serve to create a more equal and environmentally sustainable city.

These six cities show the importance of promoting change at the local level. This is a key lesson for the emerging reassessment of global efforts to achieve a sustainable future that has kicked off at the Summit of the Future and culminated in the adoption of the Pact for the Future. The Pact for the Future outlines 56 actions to accelerate global transformation. The adopted outcome document commits to “request the Secretary-General to provide recommendations on how engagement with local and regional authorities could advance the 2030 Agenda, particularly the localization of the Sustainable Development Goals” in its Action 55. Following through on this recommendation is a crucial step to unlock the transformative potential of the SDGs.

The path to achieving the SDGs may not lie in distant promises but in local actions. And the good news is that cities are already laying the groundwork. Empowering our cities isn’t just an option – it’s our best chance to get the SDGs back on track.