The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognise the importance of action across all scales to achieve a sustainable future. To contribute to overall national- and global-scale SDG achievement, local communities need to focus on a locally-relevant subset of goals and understand potential future pathways for key drivers which influence local sustainability. We developed a participatory method to co-create local socioeconomic pathways by downscaling the SDGs and driving forces of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) via a local case study in southern Australia through contextual analysis and community engagement. We linked the SSPs and SDGs by identifying driving forces and describing how they affect the achievement of local SDGs. We co-created six local socioeconomic pathways with the local community which track towards futures with different levels of fulfilment of the SDGs and each encompasses a narrative storyline incorporating locally-specific ideas from the community. We tested and validated the local pathways with the community. This method extends the SSPs in two dimensions–into the broader field of sustainability via the SDGs, and by recontextualizing them at the local scale. The local socioeconomic pathways can contribute to achieving local sustainability goals from the bottom up in alignment with global initiatives. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11625-021-00921-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

To achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), actions are required at all global, national, and local scales. To ensure coordination between scales, local actions need to be carefully planned to be aligned with global and national priorities. Local planning for sustainability must be adaptive and heterogeneous but also consistent and driven by the community. We describe an approach to co-create a local sustainability plan using the SDGs for a rural community in southeastern Australia using participatory techniques for co-creation, data collection, and review. The community placed a high priority on infrastructure for achieving sustainable growth and social equity while preserving their unique environment. By articulating their priorities in this community-led plan, the community is empowered to advocate for the sustainable development of their town with decision makers and funding bodies. If local communities create sustainability plans using the SDGs, then such planning will be consistent between and across geographic scales, and aligned with the global goals. This will also aid in achievement of the SDGs at national and global scales, as advocated by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Sustainability planning is required to achieve sustainable development across the world at all scales. Such planning should be aligned with and grounded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be comparable across scales, and use participatory techniques to understand local contexts. Planning for urban sustainability using the SDGs is well developed, but this concept has not yet been extended to rural sustainability. We describe an approach to co-create a local sustainability plan using the SDGs for a rural community in south-eastern Australia using participatory techniques for co-creation, data collection and review. We found that the community believes that infrastructure is fundamental to achieving sustainable growth and social equity while preserving their unique environment. By articulating their priorities in this community-led plan, the community are empowered to advocate for the sustainable development of their town with decision-makers and funding bodies. If rural communities create sustainability plans using the SDGs, then such planning will be consistent between and across scales, and aligned with the global goals. This will also aid in achievement of the SDGs at national and global scales, as suggested by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an agenda which recognises the importance of action across all scales and sectors to achieve a sustainable future. A bottom-up approach to realizing the SDGs, led by communities, can be achieved through localization – the downscaling of goals to the local level, allowing for heterogeneity and diversity at the local scale. In order to direct decision-making for a sustainable future, local communities require local sustainability pathways to understand potential outcomes under different conditions. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are a framework that can be adapted for use in different contexts. We developed a participatory method to downscale both the SDGs and the SSPs and link them to co-create locally relevant pathways for sustainable futures through the development of a sustainability pathway space. We localized the SDGs and the SSPs through contextual analysis and community engagement, and co-developed Local Sustainability Pathways (LSPs) with a rural community in Victoria, Australia. By using different combinations of sustainability priorities, applying the concept of the sustainability dimensions of economic growth, social inclusivity, and environment, we developed six new LSPs which depict different levels of fulfilment of the SDGs. We tested the LSPs to ensure they were distinct, that they spanned a wide range of sustainable development outcomes, and that they were credible and consistent. This method extends the SSPs in two dimensions – into the broader field of sustainability via the SDGs, and by recontextualizing them at the local scale. The LSPs can contribute to achieving local sustainability goals from the bottom up in alignment with global initiatives.