Promoting policy coherence, comparable accountability and practical peer-learning mechanisms through Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs)

#SDGAction42780

Description

Intro

As all SDGs have targets that are directly or indirectly linked to the work of local administrations, Local and Regional Governments (LRGs) play a significant role in achieving SDGs. Localising SDGs through conducting VLRs can provide a space for LRGs to have self-assessment, policy integration, accountability and peer-learning. In addition to the three reports IGES has published with respective cities, there is a plan to conduct another three VLRs with LRGS.

Objective of the practice

While it is relatively simple to set a grand plan for SDGs and Paris Agreement, it is not so easy to commit to report on their own local/regional progress on SDGs by following the standards which require them to do honest self-assessments, to share their successes and struggles, and to provide forward-looking commitments, addressing their shortcomings and challenges. However, we think that such practice is useful for cities to grasp where they are located in the big picture, by providing opportunities to discuss these issues internally and externally. The format asks for details of stakeholder engagement, which encourages LRGs to involve citizens in a positive way. In order to monitor, assess, and compare LRGs’ efforts towards decarbonisation and sustainability, experiences should be shared with other LRGs outlining what they have done, achieved, and what they have struggled to overcome.

Partners

The core partners are officials from local and/or regional governments, namely, Kitakyushu City, Toyama City, and Shimokawa Town for the first three reports. IGES has engaged with them to extract their practices, successes, obstacles, and lessons learned in order to analyse and summarise so that a general audience can structurally understand the LGRs’ implementation so far and what their future commitments are. All the reports have been drafted and confirmed by the responsible officers from the LRGs.
In the process of creating contents, many stakeholders were involved to provide opinions and feedback.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

Initiation and Planning:
Convincing partners: In the early stage of this process, IGES began convincing municipalities to join the efforts. All three that we approached were willing to cooperate, as we have been closely following their work on SDG and collaborating from time-to-time.
Designing: Internally we initiated the conversation on the types of formats we should use. After reviewing many available materials from institutes, UN, academia, and others, we decided to follow the UNSG guideline on VNRs to create consistency with UN reporting.
Execution:
As the main substance of the review had already been carried out at the local level, we were not involved in-depth more than necessary, so that the respective administrations could preserve ownership.
The role we played was to collect and analyse information from the responsible officers. We conducted both interviews and questionnaires. Those inputs were synthesised into the report in accordance with the UNSG guideline. All contents were verified by responsible officers
Monitoring:
We think that VLRs should not be one-shot but a continuous process, even though each city might not produce the same size of VLR every year. Hence this year in 2019, IGES has planned to carry out an update on the three cities that have already done the first round of VLRs. In this exercise, it is our intention to improve the review process and avoid duplication of efforts. Moreover, in order to improve our programme and to receive feedback from other cities, we plan to organise the VLR session during the HLPF in July.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

Results:
The outcomes of conducting VLRs resulted in three VLR reports published in 2018. Each is approximately 40-50 pages long and followed the format of “Handbook for the Preparation of Voluntary National Reviews: 2018 Edition.”

Impacts:
Due to the fact that the reports were presented to many mayors at the HLPF and thanks to NYC carrying out a similar type of review, now many cities have started planning to conduct VLRs this year. In a long run, we will encourage more cities and regions to conduct rigorous and forward-looking VLRs. This will prompt LRGs to be transparent, open to collaboration, and interested in learning from others.

With regards to internal impacts within municipalities, this exercise was useful for them to understand the concepts of “Leave No One Behind,” “integration of three dimensions of sustainable development,” and “stakeholder engagement” as opposed to general citizen engagement.

One concern of this initiative is that it may leave behind municipalities which have fewer resources. However, we do not intend to label those who do not conduct VLRs as less progressive. Hence, we are working on improving our methods and formats, which expand the scope of capable cities. We also try to work with foundations that might be happy to assist those municipalities to conduct VLRs.

Enabling factors and constraints

Reasons for being able to convince municipalities to conduct:
1. Encouraging Environment: an initiative by the government of Japan to select municipalities as “SDGs Future Cities” as good examples of promoting sustainable development at the local level led many municipalities to put themselves forward and make improvements to be selected
2. Those cities were significantly advanced in terms of their activities for sustainability from the time of Local Agenda 21. Therefore, there was already an understanding from the municipalities.
3. IGES has been closely working with the municipalities. This created a foundation of trust and enabled a collaborative reporting exercise touching on areas in which cites were not doing well.
Reasons for the successful completion of reporting processes:
The existence of the SG guideline for VNR was useful. Without such a format, we would have struggled to decide what to include and what to leave out. It guided both us and the cities to talk about issues that are not usually tackled. However, this itself became a constraint in the drafting process as sometimes this format did not fit into LRGs and/or local contexts. We decided to reflect the LRGs’ realities in a flexible way. This lesson prompted us to develop our own guideline based on the SG VNR guideline.

Sustainability and replicability

This project involved conducting a review and producing a report, and therefore it does not have any environmental and social impact, but has some burdens on municipalities to dedicate their staffs.
On the contrary, the project has positive impacts on all dimensions of sustainable development through promoting integrated policy processes and structuring and making accessible the lessons learnt. It intends to help local officers to document experiences better and organise them so that others can make improvements based on them.

This VLR is planned to expand its scope: one local government (Hamamatsu City) and two prefectural governments (Kanagawa Prefecture and Nagano Prefecture) have informed us of their intentions to conduct VLRs. We have also received updates from around the globe that many cities and regions are also interested in carrying out VLRs.
For Asia-Pacific, IGES is currently managing the ASEAN SDGs Frontrunner City Programme funded by JAIF, providing funding and consultations to 29 cities across 8 different countries. We plan with these cities to also produce full or shorter versions of VLRs. Partnerships with UCLG-ASPAC and ESCAP are also being developed. For the global operation, we plan to work with the Global Taskforce, UN-Habitat, UNDP, and other UN agencies.

Conclusions

We would like to convey three key messages: 
- IMPACTS: VLRs have promoted municipalities in Japan and overseas to comprehensively capture their activities and institutional setups for SDGs implementation. With many cities now showing interest this year, it was indeed impactful and inspirational for many cities. 
- BREAKTHROUGH: These were the first ever voluntary reviews by local governments (including NYC). This initiative with three cities has paved the way for local governments to support national implementations and could lead the sustainability journey ahead. This initiative also aims at creating a standardised format which allows for comparison and sharing of experiences effectively. 
- LESSONS LEARNED: there are three things we would like to improve based on our experiences; 
- 1. The need for a practical and straight-forward format, focusing on lessons learned – During the preparation of the reports, we understood that the format of the VNRs was designed for the national government to comprehensively report on their progress and hence was not necessarily fit for the purpose of VLRs. Although we have completed the reviews with its format, allowing some flexibility in each report, we thought it might be more useful to adjust the format to meet the needs of cities. 
- 2. Distinguishing between “data collection and monitoring” and “demonstrating efforts, communicate data, and documenting usable lessons learnt” – As it is the national governments’ primary responsibility to collect data and ensure those are on track, it is a possible way forward for us to focus on the background and narratives of those data. In other words, we may be able to show why those data are as they are. We are also considering how to replicate lessons learned, so that they can be easily referenced and used to guide other municipalities to better implement a similar project. 
- 3. More consultations with local officers regarding knowledge, materials, and know-how will be useful for them to improve their policymaking and implementing processes – Related to the second point, it is our intention to conduct more consultations with stakeholders to improve our reporting format and mechanism, in order to fulfil the purpose of improving the accountability and inclusiveness of local governments.

Other sources of information

IGES dedicated page to VLR: https://www.iges.or.jp/en/sdgs/report.html
Shimokawa Town: https://pub.iges.or.jp/pub/shimokawa-town-sustainable-development-goals
Toyama City: https://pub.iges.or.jp/pub/toyama-city-sustainable-development-goals-2
Kitakyushu City: https://pub.iges.or.jp/pub/kitakyushu-city-sustainable-development-goals

Overall Policy Guideline of the Ministry of the Environment;
https://www.env.go.jp/policy/kihon_keikaku/plan/plan_5/attach/ref_en-01…
https://www.env.go.jp/policy/kihon_keikaku/plan/plan_5/attach/ref_en-03…
https://www.env.go.jp/policy/kihon_keikaku/plan/plan_5/attach/ref_en-02…

SDGS & Targets

Goal 16

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal 17

Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development

Deliverables & Timeline

N/A

Resources mobilized

N/A

Partnership Progress

Title	Progress Status	Submitted
Promoting policy coherence, comparable accountability and practical peer-learning mechanisms through Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) - Sun, 06/12/2022 - 19:50	Completed	12 June, 2022