Background:

In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), various efforts are underway in countries around the world. SDG management is an indispensable perspective for local and regional governments (LRGs) and companies in Japan. On the other hand, a mechanism of collecting, evaluating and visualizing information and data as a basis of SDG management has yet to be established at the local and regional levels with Japanese local context. Thus, it is an urgent task for LRGs to set up such a system of monitoring and evaluation in order to show the results of planning and implementation so far to citizens, companies and other stakeholders in order to accelerate further efforts towards the SDGs in their respective cities and regions. Against this backdrop, UNCRD has launched a project to develop a monitoring-and-evaluation tool package in collaboration with local governments and private companies that are already committed to the SDGs, in particular in Chubu, Japan.

Objectives and Activities:

The project aims at developing the package of monitoring and evaluation tools that responds to the unique situation in each city and region in Japan while making them internationally comparable one by combining the technologies and expertise owned by project partners. By combining the information and statistical data originally owned by LRGs together with the data obtained through participatory data-collection technologies, the tool package would evaluate the current status of each LRG, efforts and the progress so far in achieving the SDGs, and also provide a basic guideline for collecting data and information.

Outputs and Expected Impact:

The results of monitoring and evaluation will not only be compiled in a report for reviewing on the annual basis but also be visualized online, for example in a form of dashboard, that can be viewed and referred by various stakeholders, including the private sector, academia and citizens. Also as project outputs, case studies using these tools will be conducted in two selected municipalities of Nagoya and Toyota Cities to demonstrate the usefulness of the tool package, and then it would also be utilized to support other LRGs in Japan and other countries in their efforts to achieve the SDGs.

The developed package would enable LRGs to evaluate and visualize the outputs and outcomes of their activities and projects towards the SDGs and provide feedback for improvement for future actions. It is expected that more and more LRGs, which are interested in monitoring and evaluation of local SDG actions and/or voluntary local review (VLR), will use the tools to effectively promote their own initiatives and projects while learning peer-to-peer so that their actions towards SDGs would be further accelerated.

https://www.uncrd.or.jp/index.php?page=view&nr=604&type=230&menu=214