This report was prepared by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE) led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Director, as part of the 2019-20 Programme of Work of the Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC). The report is a contribution to the implementation of the OECD Action Plan on the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all Member States at the 2016 Meeting of the Council at the Ministerial Level.
This report is the outcome of an 18-month policy dialogue with 1000+ stakeholders within the OECD Programme A Territorial Approach to the SDGs co-ordinated by Stefano Marta, Programme Coordinator, under the supervision of Aziza Akhmouch, Head of the Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development Division in CFE. Key findings and recommendations benefitted from the specific insights of nine pilot cities and regions (see below) where several interviews and workshops were held over 2018-2019.
The report was drafted by a core team of OECD experts, which included Stefano Marta, Antonio Canamas Catala and Stina Heikkilä, under the supervision of Aziza Akhmouch for Chapters 1, 4 and 5; and Marcos Díaz Ramírez, under the supervision of Paolo Veneri, Head of the Statistics and Territorial Analysis Unit, and Rüdiger Ahrend, Head of the Economic Analysis, Statistics, and Multi-level Governance Section, for Chapters 2 and 3, all in CFE. The report also benefited from statistical support by Milenko Fadic, Eric Gonnard and Claire Hoffmann, as well as contributions by Aline Matta and Lorenz Gross. In addition, Milenko Fadic developed the data visualisation and online tool of the project (accessible at oecd-local-sdgs.org), with the design support of Marcos Díaz Ramírez and François Iglesias.
The OECD Secretariat is grateful for the high-level political impetus and commitment from the political leaders of the nine pilot cities and regions of the OECD Programme A Territorial Approach to the SDGs, namely Ashok Sridharan, Mayor of the city of Bonn (Germany), Juan Schiaretti, Governor of the province of Córdoba and Silvina Rivero, Minister of Coordination of the province of Córdoba (Argentina), Geert Bourgeois, Minister-President of the region of Flanders, Martin Ruebens, Secretary General, Department of Public Governance and the Chancellery, region of Flanders (Belgium) and Wim Dries, Mayor of Ghent, President of Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities (VVSG, Belgium), Kenji Kitahashi, Mayor of the city of Kitakyushu (Japan), Ármann Kr. Ólafsson, Mayor of the municipality of Kópavogur (Iceland), Serguéi Sobianin, Mayor of the city of Moscow, Alexander Prokhorov, Head of the Department of Investment and Industrial Policy of the city of Moscow, (Russian Federation), Carlos Roberto Massa Júnior, Governor of the state of Parana, Keli Cristina de Souza Gali Guimaraes, Vice-President of state Council for Economic and Social Development, state of Paraná, Phelipe Mansur, Superintendent of Governance of the state of Paraná (Brazil), Søren Rasmussen, Chairman of the Committee for Regional Development, region of Southern Denmark (Denmark), and Tonje Brenna, Chair of the County Government of Viken (Norway) and Roger Ryberg, Mayor of the county of Viken (Norway).
The OECD is also grateful to the coordinators of the local teams in each of the above cities and regions for their excellent leadership, strategic guidance, active engagement and relentless support to collect data, carry out field-trips and interviews, and discuss interim results with stakeholders. These including: Verena Schwarte, Christine Pflüger and Stefan Wagner (Bonn, Germany), Sebastian Dürselen (Engagement Global), Juan Ferreiro, Mariano Plencovich and Melisa Gorondy Novak (Córdoba, Argentina), Ine Baetens, Bert Janssens and Hanne Albers (Flanders, Belgium), Osamu Suzuki, Shigeki Oba, Yoshifumi Ogawa, (Kitakyushu, Japan) and Junko Ota (IGES, Japan), Páll Magnússon and Auður Finnbogadóttir (Kópavogur, Iceland), Anastasia Larionova, Polina Kryuchkova, Asiyat Bagatyrova, and Emil Petrosyan (Moscow, Russian Federation), Filipe Braga Farhat, Geraldo Luiz Farias and Adriana Lima Domingos (Parana, Brazil), Rune Stig Mortensen, Thomas Dyhr Vestergaard, Johanna Lundström, Bo Hanfgarn Eriksen and Rikke Stamp Thorsen (Southern Denmark, Denmark), Gunn Nygard, Espen Nedland Hansen, Gørill Elisabeth Brohdahl, Charlott Sandor Johansen, Jon Moxnes and Linda Duffy (Viken, Norway).
Special thanks are herein conveyed to the EU Committee of the Regions (CoR), and in particular to Bert Kuby, Head of Unit, Commission for Economic Policy, Audrey Parizel and Nils Brunelet, for the design and implementation of the joint OECD-CoR survey carried out from 13 December 2018 to 1 March 2019, as well as for the analysis and dissemination of related findings. The OECD is grateful to the 400 respondents of the OECD-CoR survey, to the stakeholders listed in Annex A of this report who provided valuable comments on successive drafts as well as to the 800+ stakeholders consulted during the dialogues in the nine pilots.
Finally, thanks are also herein conveyed to the participants of the OECD Roundtables on Cities and Regions for the SDGs. The first meeting on 7 March 2019 (OECD Headquarters) was a key milestone to develop the analytical framework of the report, discuss the foundations of the OECD localised indicator framework for the SDGs and share views on the preliminary findings from the pilot cities and regions. The second meeting on 9 December 2019 (Bonn, Germany) was instrumental to build consensus on the findings and recommendations and to co-design the Checklist for Public Action. The city of Bonn, Germany, and Engagement Global are warmly thanked for hosting the second edition of the OECD Roundtable.
The report was peer-reviewed at the 37th Session of the Working Party on Territorial Indicators on Tuesday, 19 November 2019, at the 26th Session of the OECD Working Party on Urban Policy on Wednesday, 20 November 2019, and at the 41st meeting of the OECD Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC) on Thursday, 21 November 2019. A revised version of the report was submitted to RDPC delegates for approval by written procedure by 20 January 2020 under the cote (CFE/RDPC(2020)14/REV1). The final report was edited and formatted by Eleonore Morena, and Pilar Philip, François Iglesias and Pauline Arbel prepared the manuscript for publication.