Giving Compass' Take:

· Government officials from cities around the world propose creating specific agendas for cities to take local action and scale implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

· How can city leaderships scale impact? Why is it important to support local leadership to achieve the SDGs? How are these leaders adapting the targets to their specific areas?

· Check out this article about how US cities can help the world achieve the SGDs.

As countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the inclusion of a separate goal on urbanization (SDG 11)—to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable—was hailed as a breakthrough, establishing the significance of cities to the 2030 Agenda.

Four years in, it is clear that cities matter beyond the confines of SDG 11. Interdependencies between SDG 11 and the other SDGs ripple throughout the agenda. Even more importantly, mayors and local government officials are forming the frontlines of SDG implementation, translating the agenda’s lofty and sometimes abstract aspirations into progress felt by real people living in real communities.

These local leaders are adapting the goals and targets set at the national level to their own local realities, though a universally accepted set of local metrics and indicators does not exist. They seek to advance the entire range of SDGs, as all of the SDGs matter for their constituents, even if they don’t have direct authority over every issue.

Read the full article about city-specific agendas to achieve the SDGs by Anthony F. Pipa at The Brookings Institution.