Priorities, Scale and Insights: Opportunities and Challenges for Community Involvement in SDG Implementation and Monitoring

Abstract

Monitoring progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mainly relies on national voluntary review mechanisms, which often depend on regional spatial data and statistics. While it is critical that governments take ownership of SDG implementation and reporting, many communities are proactively driving changes towards sustainability through local action. This paper explores the potential implications of bridging national and local implementation and reporting through the lens of SDG indicators data. It presents a community-driven case study for sustainability monitoring in the Republic of Ireland, exploring how local priorities and associated data scalability and insights provide opportunities and challenges towards a comprehensive and accurate understanding of SDG progress in implementation and achievement. Systemic data availability and scale limitations weaken the evidence-base needed for informed community-driven sustainable development initiatives. Similarly, local efforts to track changes on relevant indicators are uncommon but necessary for filling in data gaps and contributing to a more accurate national reporting. The achievement of the SDGs requires invested commitment across national, regional, local, and community levels. The implementation of sustainability interventions and tracking any changes these may enact on relevant indicators is equally a joint effort, which calls for strategic data and knowledge exchange partnerships.