Local responses to global sustainability agendas: learning from experimenting with the urban sustainable development goal in Cape Town

Abstract

The success of the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11) depends on the availability and accessibility of robust data, as well as the reconfiguration of governance systems that can catalyse urban transformation. Given the uneven success of the Millennium Development Goals, and the unprecedented inclusion of the urban in the SDG process, the feasibility of SDG 11 was assessed in advance of its ratification through a series of urban experiments. This paper focusses on Cape Town’s participation in piloting SDG 11, in order to explore the role of urban experimentation in highlighting the partnership arrangements necessary to allow cities to meet the data and governance challenges presented by the SDG 11. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between data and governance that lie at the heart of the SDG 11. The urban experiment demonstrates the highly complex and multi-level governance dynamics that shape the way urban experiments are initiated, executed and concluded. The implications of these dependencies illustrate that more attention needs to be paid at the global level to what data are important and how and where the data are generated if SDG 11 is to be met. Overall, this paper makes the case that the success of SDG 11 rests on effecting local level change and enabling real opportunities in cities.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11625-017-0500-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Applying the SDGs to cities: business as usual or new dawn?

“…There is an increasing amount of research dealing with aspects regarding the use of the SDGs in cities [3,16,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Guides on localising the SDGs are starting to be available [48,49].…”

“…The number of suggested SDG indicators makes it difficult meet the required demand on data.  Policy relevance in the local context and political prioritisation process [3,31,39,46,50]. Several of the aspects that the SDGs take up might need to be addressed through policies at other than the local level; political prioritisation can simplify, but also jeopardise successful implementation of the SDGs.…”

“…Several of the aspects that the SDGs take up might need to be addressed through policies at other than the local level; political prioritisation can simplify, but also jeopardise successful implementation of the SDGs.  Covering the complexity of urban systems [12,39,42,46]. Local governments deal with many aspects that are interdependent; local implementation of the SDGs will lead to the identification of synergies but also contradictions in goal achievement.…”

“…Local governments deal with many aspects that are interdependent; local implementation of the SDGs will lead to the identification of synergies but also contradictions in goal achievement.  Dealing with out of boundary challenges and externalities [46,[51][52][53]. Cities not only have an impact within their territories but also elsewhere, leading to challenges in allocating those impacts.…”

“…Several aspects might need to be addressed at different levels and with different actors, depending on the form of governance structure in each country, including who is responsible for monitoring the addressing of these aspects.  Need for capacity and skills in the academic and practitioners' field [3,31,46,54]. More knowledge and experiences needs to be gained to be able to use the SDGs in practice as a tool to achieve sustainable development.…”