Decentralization, Local Governance, and Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific

Since its adoption in 2015, the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development has shaped not only international development cooperation but also the design of national trajectories for social and economic development. In tandem with other global agendas adopted that year (such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda) it remains the global and regional blueprint for sustainable development despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

The term "localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)" has been used to capture the importance of subnational governments for achieving national SDG agendas. However, there is little deeper analysis of the required nexus between fiscal, political, and legal arrangements for SNGs; their involvement in national policy arenas (which discuss and decide on national SDG strategies); and the need for locally disaggregated data systems on the one hand, and effective SDG localization strategies on the other hand. It is this aspect which the present publication explores in greater detail by using country examples and conceptual analyses.

The text will be of interest to policymakers, scholars, students and practitioners in public policy and public administration, decentralization, and sustainable development, with a focus on the Asia and Pacific region.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO).

Bruno Carrasco served in various positions at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), including Principal Financial Economist, South Asia Department; and Director, South Asia Public Management, Financial Sector and Trade Division. He was appointed Chief of the Governance Thematic Group in 2019 and, in February 2021, was promoted to Director-General, Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC). He has a PhD in economics from Essex University, United Kingdom, and a masters in economics from the University of British Columbia.

Hanif A. Rahemtulla is Principal Public Management Specialist at ADB. He is a public sector reform specialist focusing on public financial and investment management and fiscal decentralization with more than 20 years of experience in project management, advisory services and research in more than ten developing countries in the Asia and Pacific region. He obtained his doctoral degree from University College London (UCL) and his postdoctoral degree from McGill University, Canada.

Rainer Rohdewohld is a senior decentralization policy advisor with more than 30 years’ work experience on administrative reform, decentralization reforms, and local governance capacity building in Asia (Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, and Pakistan) and West Africa (Ghana). He holds a master’s degree in political science from the Free University (Berlin/Germany) and a master’s degree in administrative sciences from the German University of Administrative Sciences (Speyer). He is co-author of the publication Emerging Practices in Intergovernmental Functional Assignment, published by Routledge in 2017.