The Sustainable Development Goals as a Framework for COVID-19 Recovery in Cities and Regions published by OECD (2022).
The COVID-19 crisis led to unprecedented contractions of the global economy, with asymmetrical impacts across territories. What started as a health crisis turned into a massive economic and social shock and exposed inequalities across people and places, notably in large cities, where vulnerable groups were affected the most. At the same time, the pandemic also accelerated environmental awareness and made the transition towards clean mobility and circular economy approaches politically and socially more acceptable (OECD, 2020[1]).
At the forefront of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak, many cities and regions have used the United Nations (UN) 2030 Agenda as a framework to shape inclusive and greener long-term recovery strategies, for example through stimulus measures such as investments in infrastructure and financial assistance. Others have scaled up sectoral efforts underlying specific UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as expanding the supply of adequate and affordable social housing for vulnerable populations. Many cities and regions also expanded low-carbon mobility solutions such as bike lanes and invested in improving energy efficiency and retrofitting of buildings (OECD, 2020[1]).
While the pandemic has set back part of the progress made on the 2030 Agenda (UN, 2021[2]), the SDGs offer a clear and stable framework to guide governments in shaping a transformative recovery from COVID-19 and accelerating the shift towards a new urban and regional paradigm for inclusive, green, smart and resilient cities. The SDGs can offer a valuable guide for the recovery process for three key reasons. First, they provide a framework to identify local, place-based priorities directed towards sustainable development. Second, they are a powerful tool to help align priorities, incentives and resources across national, regional and local levels of government. Third, they compel governments to engage with the whole of society – including the private sector and citizens (OECD, 2020[1]).
This paper presents the results of an OECD-European Committee of the Regions (CoR) joint survey on how local and regional governments (LRGs) are leveraging the SDGs to shape their recovery strategies from the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings, reflecting the position of LRGs before the outbreak of war in Ukraine, underline a solid engagement of LRGs in the implementation of the SDGs through actions ranging from measurement systems to track progress, awareness-raising and dedicated strategies to multi-level co-operation and a promising uptake of the SDGs as a guiding framework for place-based recovery. Yet, the survey reveals that more efforts are needed to engage LRGs in Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), address funding gaps caused by the pandemic and strengthen human and technical capacities. The results of the survey also show that LRGs could further harness the SDGs to develop holistic recovery strategies that address pressing local sustainability priorities such as decarbonising electricity production, which is likely to have been heightened following Russia’s large-scale aggression against Ukraine, mitigating and adapting to climate change, accelerating digitalisation and building trust. More detailed results of the survey are presented below.
