On June 16th, 2021, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) organized the virtual meeting: “The localisation of the SDGs in Europe: local and regional indicators and multilevel governance” which gathered over 100 participants across Europe, as well as from Asia and Latin America.
Alessandro Rainoldi, Head of Unit at JRC opened the session and presented three specific reports conducted in the frame of the URBAN 2030 project, on the experiences of European local and regional governments that use monitoring as a tool to localize the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda.
On of them was the report developed by ADOS about “Regional indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals. An analysis based on the cases of the Basque Country, Navarre and Flanders” that proposes a set of regional indicators for the monitoring of the SDGs in Europe, based on the analysis of three subnational case studies. In addition, another report exploring the use of local indicators in European Local Reports between 2016 and early 2021 was also presented; and finally, an analysis of the Basque Country’s SDG ecosystem focusing on SDG localisation and multilevel governance.
The open discussion, moderated by Alice Siragusa (JRC), benefited from the contributions of three international experts (Geir Graff, Inmaculada Herrador and Agnieszka Widuto) who provided constructive feedbacks on the local value of the VLRs, the robustness of the methodology of the European Handbook for SDG Voluntary Local Reviews, and reflections on the choice and relevance of indicators, as well as suggestions for further research paths.
Markku Markkula, Vice-President EU Committee of the Regions, concluded the event. He emphasized the importance of SDGs implementations and the need to reach out to even more regions in a strategic and efficient way. He also advised to take advantage of the JRC tools and resources available, including the recent SDGs reports and guidebook materials, in order to strengthen current and future initiatives.
The presentations and the recording of the event are available in: https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/event/localisation-sdgs-europe-local-regional-indicators-multilevel-governance_en.