TOWARDS THE LOCALIZATION OF THE SDGs
5.2
Monitoring as a critical cross-level matter
The UN Secretary-General’s report to the 2021 HLPF stated very clearly that: “the ability of governments to respond effectively and recover better will also depend on the availability of data.”40 The report also recognised that the pandemic has exacerbated critical funding gaps “in national, regional, and global statistical offices, making the need to mobilize international and domestic resources to support data for decision making more urgent than ever”. It is important to emphasise that these calls for resources also need to underline the importance of data collection and monitoring at the local level. However, it is widely accepted that most of the indicators identified by the UN IAEG-SDGs are difficult for LRGs to access and use because they are, by and large, conceived for national institutions: it has been estimated that only one third of the 232 official SDG indicators can be effectively measured at the local level.41 Even though progress has been made, with relatively few exceptions, indicator availability at the subnational level remains notably insufficient. Although more and more countries are taking action to remedy this problem, the national governments and national institutions in charge of monitoring the implementation of the SDGs are generally unable to disaggregate data down to the subnational level in an adequate and sufficient way.42 Having disaggregated data is key to obtaining a reliable snapshot of the needs and living conditions of poorer communities, women, children, older people, indigenous people, migrants and refugees, people with
disabilities, and other structurally discriminated groups. Likewise, data broken down by area is needed in order to deal with the specific realities and circumstances of each country’s diverse territories and communities. Collecting disaggregated data is also crucial for ensuring sound decision-making and policy-making processes. These are vital for reducing the inequalities experienced by many groups and territories and also for supporting systematic place-based development policies.43 Due to the limited availability of data from the ground, local monitoring and reporting are still relatively rare in much of the world. Even in 2021, 41% of the LGAs in reporting countries had yet to develop any form of system for tracking the SDG localization progress. The picture is, however, somewhat better at the local level (with 72% of LRGs having developed some kind of mechanism to do this).44 The figures are especially worrying in developing countries (with the gaps in data collection mechanisms in Africa and Latin America being the most problematic, according to information collected in 2021). This is the result of a combination of failings: the approaches to data collection of some national statistics offices, which do not always look to produce and/or collect localized data, and a systemic lack of human, technical and financial resources at the local level to support effective local data collection. However, some progress has also been observed compared with last year, and LRGs and their associations should be encouraged to build upon this and to foster better enabling
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