ABSTRACT
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) provide a language and measurement system to integrate social, economic, and environmental concerns into a single framework that has been used among different sectors and different levels of government. Due to deeper knowledge about the specific issues in a community along with a tighter network, decisions and actions taken at the local level play a significant role in the design and implementation of the SDGs. This chapter describes a two-stage methodology to integrate the global aspirational goals promoted by the United Nations with the local challenges identified by community leaders to reconstruct the SDGs’ measurement system for use at the municipal level. The first stage, “Global to Local” includes a decision tree that helps guide localization in various municipal contexts, to help determine which indicators are applicable to the local context. The second stage, “Local to Global” uses a dialogic approach to examine the local knowledge base, including consulting local documents and area experts, to identify which of the original indicators are, in fact, relevant and what other issues might be missing. We complete this chapter with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities for using the SDG framework as a local framework drawing from an initiative that took place in London, Ontario, Canada.
