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

Governing the Sustainable Development Goals in the COVID-19 era: Bringing back hierarchic styles of governance?

Adopted in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were intended to motivate governments and the international community to address the world's most pressing social and environmental challenges. However, most countries are not on pace to achieve the SDGs. The economic and human toll of the COVID-19 pandemic stands to further delay action beyond the SDGs' 2030 target date. Yet, viewed from another perspective, COVID-19 offers an opportunity to improve the governance of, and accelerate progress in, the SDGs. This paper builds upon well-established work on meta-governance to determine what changes in governance could be needed for such an outcome to materialize. More specifically, the paper employs a text analysis of keywords related to hierarchic, market, and network governance styles in high-profile SDG plans from Denmark, Japan, and Viet Nam. The text analysis demonstrates that all three countries potentially rely too heavily on market-oriented governance styles. The paper then contrasts the governance for the SDGs with a qualitative review of more hierarchic styles of governance outlined in the three countries' COVID-19 programs. The paper closes by discussing whether crises such as COVID-19 can lead to more balanced modes of governance to strengthen the political momentum on the SDG

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