Abstract
The 2030 Agenda and its SDGs call for cross-sectoral collaboration and societal transformation. Translating these indivisible goals to the local level is an important undertaking for municipalities given their wide range of responsibilities. This paper explores SDG localization in a Swedish municipal organization, providing analyses on management practice, having an integrated approach to sustainability. Based on document studies and interviews, it reflects experiences from an early phase of SDG localization. Having an integrated approach to SDG localization was shown to be dependent on aspects such as structure, leadership and coordination, yet simultaneously flexibility, organizational learning as well as time and timing. Such an integrated approach also comes with the challenge of operationalizing the SDGs into management systems, budgets and motivating employees across organizational silos and levels. The paper concludes that the SDG framework presents an opportunity for municipalities to understand and review their organizations through a broad systems perspective on sustainability.
Highlights
Adopted in 2015, the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for societal transformation, where collaboration between actors, and across sectors and levels in society, is key – aiming to “leave no one behind” (United Nations 2015)
This paper explores SDG localization in a Swedish municipal organization, providing analyses on management practice, having an integrated approach to sustainability
This paper focuses on the internal municipal perspective related to SDG localization in a Swedish context
Summary
Adopted in 2015, the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for societal transformation, where collaboration between actors, and across sectors and levels in society, is key – aiming to “leave no one behind” (United Nations 2015). Regional and sub-regional levels are important in operationalizing the SDGs since their frameworks “can facilitate the effective translation of sustainable development policies into concrete action at the national level” (United Nations 2015, 7). How this is to be operationalized locally is still unclear, given the manifold of agendas, and given the complexity of local practice (Fenton and Gustafsson 2017). Implementing the SDGs is a complex undertaking, which on national and subnational levels often includes finding coherence between the seventeen goals and existing plans, strategies
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