scholarly journals Localizing the SDGs in England: Challenges and Value Propositions for Local Government

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Perry ◽  
Kristina Diprose ◽  
Nick Taylor Buck ◽  
David Simon

The United Nations' Development Goals (SDGs) have been criticized but are nonetheless seen by many as an important, if imperfect, international effort to address climate and environmental change, resource depletion and the unsustainability of contemporary life. Many of the Goals need to be implemented at the local level, yet sub-national governments have not been granted any enhanced status at the UN to facilitate this process. As a result, the role and effectiveness of local governments in localizing the SDGs is dependent on multi-level arrangements within respective national contexts. In this paper we present findings on the challenges facing local authorities in England, namely co-dependent ambivalence, partial holism and narrow practices of knowledge governance. We draw on work carried out collaboratively with local authorities and other stakeholders in Greater Manchester and Sheffield, and a UK-wide national workshop. These challenges explain the relatively low uptake and engagement with the SDGs in the context of wider political and economic concerns compared with international comparator cities. Against this background our research found that making the Goals real, relevant, relatable and relational offered a tactical route to localization for English local government.

e-Finanse ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-75
Author(s):  
Adam Mateusz Suchecki

AbstractFollowing the completion of the process of decentralisation of public administration in Poland in 2003, a number of tasks implemented previously by the state authorities were transferred to the local level. One of the most significant changes to the financing and management methods of the local authorities was the transfer of tasks related to culture and national heritage to the set of tasks implemented by local governments. As a result of the decentralisation process, the local government units in Poland were given significant autonomy in determining the purposes of their budgetary expenditures on culture. At the same time, they were obliged to cover these expenses from their own revenues.This paper focuses on the analysis of expenditures on culture covered by the voivodship budgets, taking into consideration the structure of cultural institutions by their types, between 2003-2015. The location quotient (LQ) was applied to two selected years (2006 and 2015) to illustrate the diversity of expenditures on culture in individual voivodships.


2020 ◽  
pp. 014473942096316
Author(s):  
Santanu Lahiri ◽  
JB Rajan

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. To maintain the pace of development, local government institutions (LGIs) in many countries have started adapting innovative good practices. These practices are being generated as an offshoot of some projects, initiated by local governments, sub-national and/or national governments. However, these innovations are generally so closely associated, and depend so much on those projects, that once the projects officially phase out, the good practices also start falling apart. Those training institutions for LGIs in Asian countries are imparting training and applying participatory methodologies like peer learning. This enhances the capacities of the functionaries of the respective LGIs. However, the learning that emerges from the good practices, that have evolved, is often missed out in these course curricula, despite the fact that both the good practices and capacity for generating good practices, exist at the local level in the form of tacit learning. The Horizontal Learning Process (HLP) helps to overcome the inherent limitations of existing training methodology by capturing, upscaling, and nurturing tacit learning based on good practices. This paper highlights the concept and salient features of HLP, its evolution, process and steps, application areas, achievements and challenges—especially in the context of the SDGs and the role of LGIs.


2020 ◽  
pp. 014473942097474
Author(s):  
Santanu Lahiri ◽  
JB Rajan

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. To maintain the pace of development, local government institutions (LGIs) in many countries have started adapting innovative good practices. These practices are being generated as an offshoot of some projects, initiated by local governments, sub-national and/or national governments. However, these innovations are generally so closely associated, and depend so much on those projects, that once the projects officially phase out, the good practices also start falling apart. Those training institutions for LGIs in Asian countries are imparting training and applying participatory methodologies like peer learning. This enhances the capacities of the functionaries of the respective LGIs. However, the learning that emerges from the good practices, that have evolved, is often missed out in these course curricula, despite the fact that both the good practices and capacity for generating good practices, exist at the local level in the form of tacit learning. The Horizontal Learning Process (HLP) helps to overcome the inherent limitations of existing training methodology by capturing, upscaling, and nurturing tacit learning based on good practices. This paper highlights the concept and salient features of HLP, its evolution, process and steps, application areas, achievements and challenges—especially in the context of the SDGs and the role of LGIs.


Upravlenie ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
S. S. Hamidov

The main problems of the modern institution of civil participation in the implementation of local government in Russia have been analyzed in the article. Modern effective tools and processes, in the context of “civil participation” have been described. A number of issues and problems of formation of the institute of local government has been considered The democratic nature of the local government implies, the principle of transparency of the decisionmaking system at the local level and high level of trust of the population to local governments. Based on the study of processes, taking place in the country, as well as the analysis of scientific literature on civil pariticpation issue, the author highlights the factors, influencing the level of public confidence in the activities of local governments and the decision-making process by actors in the process of interaction between the authorities and society, in terms of ensuring the democratic nature of the local power.The aim of the analysis of the process of building the system of local government, under which social activity and civil participation in the implementation of the local government requires an interdisciplinary approach - to develop effective solutions and technologies of work with citizens, local authorities, that will lead to increased transparency in decision-making and enhance public confidence in the local authorities. In consideration, that developed institute of civil participation is a complex institution, which is an indicator of the democratic principle of organization of power, at the same time requiring a more thorough analysis of the type of relationship the actor process of interaction of authorities and society and their objectives, the author puts forward several theories, whereby you can ensure the effectiveness of the process of “participation”, in the context of mainstreaming, as described by the author.In the same way modern and effective tools and techniques have been described in the article, the application of which, according to the author, will lead to greater transparency in the work of local government authorities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-124
Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Quang ◽  
Doan Trieu Long ◽  
Nguyen Dung Anh ◽  
Thanh Nguyen Hai

The important role of local government in the socio-economic development of localities has been confirmed in many domestic and foreign studies. But the role of government in drought adaptation has often received little attention and analysis in domestic studies. Approaching from the local tectonic government model, the article argues that local government is an important link to promote adaptive capacity at the local level of Vietnam and the Central Highlands provinces provide a case study that is typical for research and development of the capacity to adapt to drought and natural disasters for local authorities in Vietnam. Analysis of adaptive capacity through case studies in local government in the Central Highlands provinces shows that capacity is a major challenge for local governments here. The paper recommends that it is necessary to further expand the initiative and role of local authorities in guiding and promoting adaptation for communities and local people. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2021-02-02-03 Full Text: PDF


2021 ◽  
pp. 245513332110476
Author(s):  
Faisal Hassan Issa

National governments set policies that affect local level development and influence the pace and content of development initiatives. Local economic development (LED) initiatives require a more robust focus on issues that places local government authorities at centre stage. For decades, at the local government authority level, much effort has been seen in the social development arena shadowing efforts to promote local businesses through business development services. National level organs set to promote businesses and to support the business agenda are expected to be the change catalysts and to propagate supportive policies for sustainable local economic development objectives. Nonetheless, the desired integration of efforts between national and local authorities and the civil society is yet to be observed. Additionally, frequent policy changes affecting the balance of power and authority between the national and local level authorities impact less positively local capacity to promote businesses despite the national efforts in infrastructure development. It is observed that better integration of efforts between the different actors, increased capacity of local authorities and implementation of local initiatives to surmount local challenges while working on policy attributed gaps, are necessary for promoting businesses at the local authority level.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
Wojciech Jarczewski

The acquisition of new investors in a municipality is not a direct obligation of local govern-ments but rather one of the indications of the change in the philosophy of municipal manage-ment – from administration (local government) to management (local governance). Time andcost consuming comprehensive proinvestment activities can be implemented only in thosemunicipalities where among the local authorities the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive. G. Gorzelak (1998) indicated that on the local level the leadership quality is the most endogenic factor oflocal success, including luring new investors.To examine the significance and diversity of local authorities’ attitudes in their pro-investment activities in the local governments, in fourteen selected municipalities in Poland a compa-rative analysis was conducted. Pro-investment activities, implemented since 1990, and theireffects, in the form of arrival of new investors, were studied. Our research covered the municipa-lities distinguished by potentially high investment attractiveness which is hardly dependent onthe local authorities’ activities: good transportation availability, considerable real-estate resour-ces that are suitable for potential investors and good availability of qualified labor force. Conse-quently, we excluded the municipalities in which even very intense works of their local authoritiesfailed to develop new opportunities to attract many new businesses


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 2765
Author(s):  
Joanna Rakowska ◽  
Irena Ozimek

The deployment of renewable energy at the local level can contribute significantly to mitigating climate change, improving energy security and increasing social, economic and environmental benefits. In many countries local authorities play an important role in the local development, but renewable energy deployment is not an obligatory task for them. Hence there are two research questions: (1) Do local governments think investments in renewable energy (RE) are urgent and affordable within the local budgets? (2) How do they react to the public aid co-financing investments in renewable energy? To provide the answer we performed qualitative analysis and non-parametric tests of data from a survey of 252 local authorities, analysis of 292 strategies of local development and datasets of 1170 renewable energy projects co-financed by EU funds under operational programs 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 in Poland. Findings showed that local authorities’ attitudes were rather careful, caused by financial constraints of local budgets and the scope of obligatory tasks, which made renewable energy investments not the most urgent. Public aid was a factor significantly affecting local authorities’ behavior. It triggered local authorities’ renewable energy initiatives, increasing the number and scope of renewable energy investments as well cooperation with other municipalities and local communities. Despite this general trend, there were also considerable regional differences in local authorities’ renewable energy behavior.


Author(s):  
Galina Morozova ◽  
◽  
Diana Fatikhova ◽  
Elmira Ziiatdinova ◽  
◽  
...  

Introduction. The article presents the results of a study of communication in the system of local self-government of the Republic of Tatarstan as a subject of the Russian Federation conducted by the authors in November – December 2019. The study included a survey of representatives of regional media and press services of local authorities of the Republic of Tatarstan in order to determine the model of communication in the local government system and the role of PR-activities in the regulation of social interaction in the region. Methods and materials. The main method of studying was the method of expert survey. The authors developed a questionnaire, which was used during an interview with experts. When choosing an expert – a media representative for the interview – the authors took into account three factors: the rating of the represented media, the experience of the respondent in the regional media (at least five years) and the authority to make a key decision on the publication of the material. In order to identify the experts who are representatives of local self-government bodies, the authors of the article determined the following criteria: implementation of information and analytical activities in the structure of local self-government bodies, at least 5 years of experience as a head of a structural unit (public relations / media relations department) of local self-government bodies. Analysis. The analysis showed that the development of social media accelerates the process of establishing a two-way model of communication between the government and the public. Social media have become a full-fledged source of information both for the journalistic community and for the press services of local governments. Moreover, with the help of the content posted in posts on official accounts on social networks, local governments can attract residents of the municipal territory to participate in solving local issues. Constant monitoring, responding to comments, tracking negative content on social media are becoming everyday practices in the work of press services. Results. The results of the study indicate that over the past decade in the Russian Federation the necessary prerequisites have been formed for the formation of a bilateral symmetrical model of communication between local authorities and the population. This model is aimed at providing effective feedback that allows the local government to quickly respond to the aspirations and needs of the population, monitor their dynamics, constantly monitor the attitude and assessments of citizens of decisions made on the development of the city or region.


Author(s):  
Fabio De Matteis ◽  
Daniela Preite

After highlighting the breadth and complexity of the concept of sustainability and highlighting the role of local authorities in sustainable development, this chapter aims to interpret how sustainability management can consider the concept of financial sustainability in the context of local governments. It does this through the following specific objectives: 1) defining financial sustainability, considering it not only autonomously, but in an integrated manner with respect to the typical sustainability dimensions (environmental, social, and economic) that are usually involved in the local authorities activity; 2) proposing the main stages of the sustainability cycle in the local authorities to highlight the key moments and the role of financial sustainability; 3) analyzing some aspects of financial indicators as tools for measuring the financial side of the sustainability profile of a local government. In order to reach the aim of the chapter, the research methodology followed is the literature review.


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