SDG Localisation and Decentralised Development Aid: Exploring Opposing Discourses and Practices in Valencia's Aid Sector

Abstract

The approval of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has generated intense debates in the aid sector at the global, national and subnational levels. A key question in these debates is whether these measures can address structural problems in development aid policies and practices, such as the lack of accountability and coherence, unequal power relations, or depoliticisation.It seems that this will depend on how the agenda is adopted in the various territories as well as on the different interests at play. We will address this question by studying the case of the Valencian Autonomous region. This is the region in Spain where institutions have been the most active in establishing the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs at the core of the political discourses and priorities.We follow a qualitative methodology based on semi-structured interviews with key respondents from the public, civil society and university sectors, participant observation, and the analysis of secondary information. Inspired by critical discourse analysis, we explore the varying and conflicting discourses regarding the potential of SDGs to address the problems that aid policies and practices have, and on the impacts that the adoption of SDGs are producing. We illustrate that the introduction of SDGs in aid policies is a conflictive process modelled by the power dynamics at play.

Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals: The case of Tanzania

“…This legacy marks the political culture even if the country introduced a multi-party system years ago. Recent reports on the government's attempts to silence the opposition indicate that the likelihood of future criticism of the government's SDG work is relatively low (Backlund, 2019).…”

“…Jones & Comfort, 2019), they have not explored the political qualities of localization processes through a focus on political institutions. Rather, their focus has been on the aid sector (Belda‐Miquel et al, 2019), on governance by numbers (Fisher & Fukuda‐Parr, 2019), on developing systems thinking capacity at the local level (Tan et al, 2019) and on the city level as such (Valencia et al, 2019). By combining the three concepts of legitimacy, responsibility and accountability in our study, we arrive at a richer understanding of the politics of SDG localization that is also reflected in real‐life political processes.…”

“…"We need constructive ideas and we need resources to implement programmes for the development of our people" (Dodoma, personal communication, November 2018). In fact, several donors have ceased or frozen their aid in recent years due to what they argue to be repressive policies (Backlund, 2019).…”

Reaching the Disadvantaged: Ensuring Access to Quality Early Childhood Care and Education in the Estate Sector of Sri Lanka

“…As a result, they are not ready for formal primary education (Brainerd & Menon, 2015). In the meantime, some international-level policies are planned to ensure access to quality education, even though it requires local level specifications as the problems grounded in specific socio-cultural contexts are difficult to be addressed through globally accepted yet locally unspecified policies (Belda-Miquel et al, 2019;Escobar, 2011;Tayler, 2011). Thus, this research also explored how local knowledge supports achieving access to quality ECCE in the estate sector of Sri Lanka.…”

Pedagogy of hope: global learning and the future of education

“…Yet, despite good intentions, the SDGs have had minimal impact on government policies. They have not addressed the dominance of neoliberal influences on economies around the world and the resultant impacts on societies as a consequence of a blinkered drive towards profit and a mantra of market forces (Fowler and Biekart, 2020;Belda-Miquel et al, 2019). Although there has been some progress on some of the SDGs, there are few examples where national or regional policies have significantly changed as a result of trying to address the goals (United Nations, 2020).…”