Co-creating local socioeconomic pathways for achieving the sustainable development goals

Abstract

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.

A review of systems modelling for local sustainability

“…The SDGs, as a guiding framework, can enhance the incorporation of societal factors through the ways mentioned above (i.e., scenarios, models, interactions) by providing a balanced representation of sustainability dimensions. For example, Szetey et al (34) recently used the SDGs to map a balanced representation of scenario drivers in a local community for a future system dynamics modelling work. Pedercini et al (25) used SDGs as their analytical lens for endogenising societal aspects such as inequality and well-being in a system dynamics model.…”

“…The choice of local scale is prominent given that SDG progress is highly dependent on knowing and managing the changes on the ground (33). Highly nuanced socioeconomic conditions and capacities and the diversity of stakeholder interests necessitate bottom-up initiatives that can be tailored to specific local characteristics (34). Bottom-up, grassroots efforts can be an opportunity to address place-based needs and priorities while also recognising the interlinkages with sustainability aspirations at higher scales.…”

Participatory planning for local sustainability guided by the Sustainable Development Goals

“…Sustainability planning at the local scale requires participation from the community, driven by the community (what is known as a bottom-up approach) to increase the chances of a successful outcome (Brody et al 2003, Burby 2003, Bagheri and Hjorth 2007, Mistry et al 2016, Hallström et al 2019, Moallemi et al 2021. There are two main reasons for this requirement: first, only local actors possess the intimate connection to place and local knowledge needed to develop place-based solutions (Manzo and Perkins 2006); and second, local areas have been subjected to repeated transitions in governance and economies, over many years and often imposed from above, and this has engendered a skepticism in populations of top-down planning and change (Frank and Reiss 2014).…”

“…One study developed a rural revitalization strategy guided by the SDGs, and also identified the research gap in using participatory methods for SDG planning at the local scale (Diaz-Sarachaga 2020). Localization of the SDGs involves identifying locally relevant sustainability ambitions through the use of participatory methods (Szetey et al 2021) and aligns the needs of local actors with national and global priorities (Moallemi et al 2020). Using the SDGs to guide sustainability planning at the local scale will facilitate the consistency that we identified as lacking, and using participatory processes to localize them ensures the bottom-up, community-driven approach that is necessary for success.…”

Assessment of Landscape Co-Benefits in Natura 2000 Site Management Plans

“…The perspective of a multidimensional policy, open to internalize and maximize all effects produced in a causal (co-benefits or co-costs) and not random (benefits/costs accessory or secondary) way, can produce value for a wider audience and address in a structured way the mediation of the opportunity costs generated by the policy itself, pursuing its overall objective more effectively. By interconnecting a plurality of subjects and resources, it is possible to promote a co-generative [163][164][165][166][167] model of development that leads to better systemic communication in the Luhmannian sense and is capable of increasing territorial capital [162]. The objective of protection of the Natura 2000 "La Timpa di Acireale" site and its strategies generate underlying objectives and programmes to be identified and developed on the scale of the various sectors involved.…”