Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators for municipalities: a comprehensive monitoring approach from Germany

While the 2030 agenda addresses the United Nation member states primarily at their national levels, municipalities play a crucial role in implementing all of the 17 SDGs and many of the 169 targets. These processes must be monitored and evaluated. However, the UN indicators are not sufficiently applicable to the local context. Therefore, a multi-stakeholder working group was formed in Germany to develop a comprehensive set of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for municipalities, together with additional instruments to support local SDG monitoring such as an SDG data portal. The first catalogue which included 47 core SDG indicators was published in 2018. According to consecutive evaluations and practical tests, the indicator set was substantially expanded and revised to a final number of 120 SDG indicators. About half of the 120 indicators are provided with local-level data and the other half must be assessed individually for comprehensive local SDG monitoring. Likewise, accompanying tools were relaunched with additional functionalities. Although this new and unique set of indicators now covers a majority of the municipally relevant targets, there are still some decisive monitoring gaps for various reasons. The strengths and weaknesses of our methodological approach, as well as implications for future research and practical developments, are discussed.