Local Governments and SDG Localisation: Reshaping Multilevel Governance from the Bottom up

ABSTRACT As acknowledged in the literature on Sustainable Human Development, the involvement of local levels of government in delivering the SDGs is an important issue and one that needs to be examined also through the capability approach. Through an analysis of the current state and evolution of the SDG localisation movement, and even in the response to the COVID-19 crisis, the paper identifies entry points that can be leveraged to enhance institutional capabilities to deliver sustainable development. Indeed, the SDG localisation movement is expanding in almost all regions, showing an increasing polysemy of meanings and modalities for local governments and stakeholders. The movement has witnessed valuable progress with the expansion of Voluntary Local and Subnational Reviews (VLRs and VSRs respectively), the transformation of limited consultative approaches into an enhanced involvement of a plurality of actors, including citizen participation, and the evolution from restricted spaces for dialogue to ambitious multilevel governance arrangements and multistakeholder co-creation efforts that, following the capability approach, recognise the diversity of abilities. These improvements have fostered local ownership and catalysed opportunities for joint achievements. After all, local governments, as the level of government closest to the population, are best placed to respond to their needs and priorities, and to leverage their collective capabilities and agency to develop common pathways using the SDGs as enablers of change. All these efforts promote the production of collective knowledge which can progressively transform local institutions and support the evolution of multilevel governance processes.