Enabling local adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is important to accelerate global efforts to achieve sustainable development. However, local governments have plural perspectives on how to engage with the SDGs. In this paper, we identify three perspectives on how to enable local SDGs based on cases of nine local governments in Australia. We emphasize the need for seeing local SDG adoption as contextualized and actor-driven processes.

Local governments worldwide are taking the initiative to engage with sustainable development goals (SDGs) despite the absence of a globally coordinated guideline on local SDGs actions. With less than a decade until its 2030 deadline, a more targeted and nuanced approach to enabling local SDG actions is needed. In this paper, we argue that there is a need to look at local SDG actions as an actor-driven process where agency, contexts, purpose, and dynamics co-evolve and shape the outcome of the process. Using Q-methodology, we explore different perspectives on what enables local SDGs actions in nine local governments in Australia. Three perspectives in enabling local SDG actions emerged from the study: (1) ‘Enablers should support institutional embeddedness of the SDGs’, (2) ‘Enablers should support stakeholder coordination for the SDGs’, and (3) ‘Enablers should support community engagement for the SDGs’. Each perspective has preferred enablers, contextualized within certain ways of engaging with the SDGs, certain views of the SDGs, and specific local contexts and capacities. This study provides insights to contextualize knowledge in current literature to enable local SDG actions.

Many understand that the local adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is not a one-shoe-fits-all process, but what are some of the plurality in local SDG adoptions? In this paper, we identify three perspectives on enabling the SDGs based on nine local governments in Australia.

This article takes stock of the 2030 Agenda and focuses on five governance areas. In a nutshell, we see a quite patchy and often primarily symbolic uptake of the global goals. Although some studies highlight individual success stories of actors and institutions to implement the goals, it remains unclear how such cases can be upscaled and develop a broader political impact to accelerate the global endeavor to achieve sustainable development. We hence raise concerns about the overall effectiveness of governance by goal-setting and raise the question of how we can make this mode of governance more effective.

A recent meta-analysis on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has shown that these global goals are moving political processes forward only incrementally, with much variation across countries, sectors, and governance levels. Consequently, the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains uncertain. Against this backdrop, this article explores where and how incremental political changes are taking place due to the SDGs, and under what conditions these developments can bolster sustainability transformations up to 2030 and beyond. Our scoping review builds upon an online expert survey directed at the scholarly community of the ‘Earth System Governance Project’ and structured dialogues within the ‘Taskforce on the SDGs’ under this project. We identified five governance areas where some effects of the SDGs have been observable: (1) global governance, (2) national policy integration, (3) subnational initiatives, (4) private governance, and (5) education and learning for sustainable development. This article delves deeper into these governance areas and draws lessons to guide empirical research on the promises and pitfalls of accelerating SDG implementation.

As SDG implementation lags behind, this article explores 5 governance areas asking how to strengthen the global goals.