Our publications

Discover the 7th edition of our annual study on the localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Only 15% of the SDGs are on track. And according to the OECD, 65% of SDG targets depend on local and regional efforts.

Therefore, empowering local governments with the necessary resources and decision-making power is vital: successful effective SDG policies call for a decentralised, bottom-up, territorial approach.

This year promises to be especially relevant as the Summit of the Future being held in September will give all actors the opportunity to come together to address our global challenges.

Click here to download the full pdf of the study.

This interactive guide is a practical tool for any LRG wanting to start their journey on the SDGs. The SDGs, established in 2015 by the United Nations, cannot be achieved without the effort of LRGs. Many core themes within the SDG agenda are themes in which LRGs already take an important role. The SDGs offer a different viewpoint on creating impact on these issues, which can benefit local governments. Therefore, this interactive guide aims to provide a quick overview of information for local governments to start working with the SDGs.

This publication aims at identifying the main reflections, issues and questions that apply to public policies and feminisms, which may be useful not only to specialised politicians and experts on the subject, but to anyone who is interested in including this perspective in local public policies, or in their public or private initiatives.

So you want to become internationally active as a local government and are looking for suitable forms of global cooperation? This dashboard can help you. It provides an overview of existing forms, approaches and practices. Each approach is briefly described with a definition and some characteristics, such as the added value for local government, participation, duration and budget. In addition, some good practices are given for each approach.

“We are fast approaching the halfway point on the road to the 2030 Agenda and the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), meaning there are only six summers left! The year 2023 therefore represents a critical milestone in determining the path to take stock of the remaining time, with many substantial challenges ahead, as well as significant opportunities that must not be overlooked.”

CEMR President Gunn Marit Helgesen

Read or download the full publication in pdf.

“Over the last few years, we have become accustomed to living with words that define new concepts and situations that we could not have imagined when we presented the last study by the European Union-Latin America Decentralised Cooperation Observatory, resulting from the 7th Annual Conference held in 2019. Today, terms such as the so-called new normal, pandemic, COVID-19, lockdown, collapse, complex emergencies or multiple transitions are used on a daily basis all over the world. We are witnessing an unprecedented multiple crisis that, due to its global and multidimensional scope, exceeds all limits, shaking the foundations on which our societies have been built in recent decades.”

Pilar Díaz Romero, Deputy to the Presidency and Delegate for International Relations of Diputació de Barcelona

The main aim of the report is to analyse the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the development cooperation policies of the Spanish autonomous communities, with special emphasis on strategic planning processes and dialogue with other public policies. More broadly, it also aims to examine the position and role of development cooperation in regional strategies for the 2030 Agenda (or localisation of the SDGs). Given its inclusion in the PLATFORMA project, the need to prepare a questionnaire-based analysis methodology that could be used in other European contexts was also identified.

Based on the general characteristics of the frameworks in which European de centralized partnerships operate, this document, organized in a similar way to the Trainers’ Workshop process of Module 4, provides some more details on the reality and diversity of DC in the EU, always with the SDGs as a point of reference.

This study gathers the most recent information on how and to what extent associations and networks of local and regional governments have been involved in the localisation of the SDGs, both in Europe and with their global peers, and in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year’s survey therefore included questions on the SDGs’ implementation since 2015 and the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. In the last two sections, there were also additional questions regarding Voluntary Subnational Reviews (VSR) and decentralised cooperation.

The DC Handbook is a joint effort to provide a source of concrete examples on European local and regional governments’ international action with partners abroad and allows insights on the diversity of territories and partnerships. It displays practical examples critical to showcase the capacity of the subnational level to generate changes which assist in solving real life issues encountered where they are most pressing and present for citizen: at local and regional level.

Publié en 2017, le Guide « Promouvoir l’égalité femmes-hommes : Vers une approche de Genre dans les projets de coopération décentralisée » vient de faire l’objet d’une refonte et mise à jour. Il sera par ailleurs désormais disponible en version interactive en ligne. Cette nouvelle mouture a aussi bénéficié du soutien du réseau PLATFORMA, financé par l’Union européenne.

As institutions grapple with the multiple challenges facing communities the term resilience has emerged as a concept that offers the promise of coherence. It has the capacity to help policy makers
from all sectors make sense of a seemingly ever more dynamic context. This paper aims to provide a resource for local government stakeholders – local government officials, elected representatives as well as central government counterparts with a mandate to support and enable effective and efficient local government. […]

SDG 5 is an urgent call for action to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The purpose of this paper is to review existing mentoring programmes for women’s political participation, leadership and advancement with focus on those supported by partners of CLGF, the ComWLG Network and PLATFORMA in the Commonwealth and beyond. The review is designed to offer a snapshot of select programmes, their salient features and lessons learned in the implementation.

This booklet was written as a guide to help local government actors in connecting the SDGs to their mandates and daily tasks, across all sectors and areas. As a first step, the booklet can act as a
checklist for those wondering how their own work is related to the goals. But the intention is more than that: we hope to inspire decision makers and staff to venture into new grounds, and to  jointly develop or enhance policies and actions that contribute to multiple SDGs in conjunction. We are happy to share this booklet with our international partners. We also wish to mention our  Flemish colleagues (VVSG) whose work on similar issues has been a source of inspiration. […]

Over 90 Dutch municipalities are members of VNG International’s Gemeenten4GlobalGoals (‘Municipalities4Globals’) campaign. For over several years now, the campaign has designed guides for municipalities to support their journey to incorporate and internalise the 17 SDGs. The initiative for this brochure for council members stemmed from the growing initiative and enthusiasm that  an be observed in municipal councils to put the SDGs on the map locally and to get started. Global Goals, local action. […]

The 2020 edition of Venice City Solutions 2030 organised by AICCRE was held for the first time solely online. This was a challenge and an obligatory choice, given the  spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the fall of that year, which nevertheless proved to be a good opportunity in terms of participation, as the remote mode encouraged connection to the event from all latitudes. […]

A global pandemic, social crises, conspiracy theories: a veritable hurricane is blowing through the organisation of our societies, defying elected representatives. The Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) could be an answer because their framework sets a clear, common goal, entailing a shared responsibility. They aim at the implementation of public services, which are concrete results of the organisation of a society, for and by the citizens.

The ambition of this publication is to help understand how to apply this framework, how to make it real thanks, in particular, to the role of associations of local and regional governments in Europe. This publication contributes to overcoming this impasse and improving social harmony, in Europe and beyond.

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Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR)/Global Citizenship Education (GCE) can cultivate the spirit of the 2030 Agenda because it helps acquiring missing knowledge on global
interconnections and creates spaces for enquiries.

Whilst old constraints still remain and new challenges are appearing, local and regional governments continue to innovate, experiment and work hand in hand with key partners, including
with their peers across the globe, to find new solutions and achieve their ambitions.

Discover in this publication how local and regional governments are active in supporting learning and fostering changes in a context of socio-economic recovery plans.

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