Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into Urban Climate Plans in the UK and Japan: A text analysis

open access articleCities are increasingly adopting potentially sustainable climate plans. Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into these plans could help stabilize the climate while generating jobs, narrowing equity gaps, fostering innovation, and delivering other sustainability benefits. Yet, how much cities are integrating the SDGs into climate plans remains poorly understood. This article shed light on this question with a text analysis of SDG “keywords” in climate plans for two British and two Japanese cities. The results revealed that none of the surveyed cities have connected climate with socioeconomic priorities covered in SDG1 (poverty), SDG8 (employment), SDG5 (gender), and SDG10 (inequalities). Meanwhile, the United Kingdom cities made more connections between climate and responsible consumption and production (SDG12) than the Japanese cities. Further, Kyoto, Japan shares a climate-SDGs linkages profile that resembles the United Kingdom cities more than Kawasaki. Though not without limitations, text analysis can facilitate the city-to-city peer learning needed to make urban climate plans sustainable within and across countries

An Integrated and Inclusive SLCP Strategy for Asia: Recommended Policy and Institutional Reforms

This chapter aims to bring policy and institutional considerations to the center of work on Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (SLCPs). Its primary purpose is to suggest policy and institutional reforms needed for an integrated and inclusive slcp strategy in Asia. The chapter begins by setting the context with a review of the interrelated yet varying impacts of SLCPs. It then underlines how work on 1) the science-policy-society interface; 2) multi-sectoral, multi-level governance; and 3) just transitions can shed light on policy and institutional reforms underpinning an integrated and inclusive SLCP strategy. These reforms focus more attention on strengthening policy coherence, interagency coordination and vertical integration as well as opening compensatory programmes (for stakeholders adversely affected by SLCPs, in addition to control measures) and deliberative decision making fora. Embedding key SLCP measures such as inspection/maintenance programmes, clean cookstoves and open burning of biomass residue in these broader institutional and policy reforms is critical for moving work on SLCPs forward in Asia and other regions