The Local Futures project aims to drive a new wave of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) localization throughout Canada, aligning the international focus of the SDGs with local priorities in Canadian communities.
This work will:
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Focus on the creation of municipal reporting on the SDGs
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Facilitate a collective impact model for community stakeholders to advance the SDGs collaboratively with their local government
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Develop new sets of localized SDG indicators and data points for municipalities to track their progress
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Inspire a deeper integration of the SDGs across the country through the development of learning resources, annual gatherings, and resource sharing.
Many of the world’s cities that have been leaders in localizing the SDGs (such as the cities of Los Angeles, USA and Bristol, UK) have established close working relationships with their local universities to advance their work. Our objective with Local Futures is to build on this successful global model of university-municipal collaboration to drive a new wave of SDGs localization throughout Canada.
Assessing Progress and Future Planning
Establish and support five university-municipal working groups across Canada with the objective of creating an SDGs progress report (known as a Voluntary Local Review) for each participating municipality. This includes creating a baseline of current municipal SDGs activities, identifying SDGs gaps and opportunities, and engaging key municipal leaders.
Collective Impact
Create an inclusive dialogue with community stakeholders on the relevance of the SDGs and how they can be used to address local development challenges and opportunities. Using a to include a broad community mobilization effort towards supporting new community-based ideas, partnerships, and initiatives.Ìý
Data Localization
Establish a data localization framework to determine existing municipal SDGs-aligned targets and indicators and create a methodological framework to guide how to go about creating new ones where gaps or inconsistencies exist. Also includes exploring alignment of City and community owned data and integration into the data systems, as well as convening a national SDGs data working group to develop a set of baseline SDGs indicators that all municipalities in Canada can use as a resource in their data localization process.
All project work will be shared through a variety of public events and knowledge sharing resourcesÌýdesigned to help inspire others to advance their own SDGs localization work. This includes hosting an annual SDGs Localization Symposium to spotlight advances in localization efforts across the country, publish guides on operationalizing the SDGs in municipalities, convening webinars on SDGs data, and supporting university-municipal working groups and the Government of Canada to participate in global SDGs events to share national SDGs progress with the world.