Editorial: A “Decade for Action” on SDG Localisation

Abstract

In September 2019, the UN Secretary-General called for a “Decade for Action” to ensure that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) become fully operational. This is now the primary challenge for academicians and policymakers alike. The 2030 Agenda represents a universal and overarching roadmap for achieving sustainable development from a multidimensional perspective. During the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated various problems within our economies and societies (Anand et al. 2020), disrupting our capacity to overcome the unsustainability of modern production and consumption patterns and making the call to “leave no one behind” even more pronounced. Fulfilling the transformative potential of the 2030 Agenda requires a participatory, whole-of-government approach for its implementation, which is in line with the Sustainable Human Development paradigm and its pillars of equity, sustainability, productivity and participation. In other words, it is now more urgent than ever to translate the integrated and indivisible vision of sustainable development underlying the 2030 Agenda, its SDGs and the relative targets into supranational, national and local strategies and policy initiatives. Real action to accelerate sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges (e.g. public health, poverty, gender, climate change and inequality) occurs not only at the global level but also, and especially, at the country and local levels. Indeed, the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development requires an innovative multilevel governance approach that goes beyond the traditional scope of the nation state in favour of a vertical alignment between the various levels of governance (i.e. international, national, regional and local) and horizontal engagement between public, private and social actors, with a view of driving policy coherence towards a common vision (Smoke and Nixon 2016). It is, therefore, essential to avoid the traditional “top-down” versus “bottomup” dichotomy, given the continuous interaction of resources, skills, knowledge and initiatives between levels and sectors. The sustainability transition, in particular, requires a complementary perspective based on the role of local and