Efforts are underway in many countries around the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For Japanese local governments (LGs) and companies, management that takes the SDGs into account is now an indispensable perspective. On the other hand, a mechanism of collecting and analyzing information and data as a basis of SDG management has yet to be established at the local level. Thus, it is an urgent task for LGs to set up such a system of monitoring and evaluation in order to assess the results of planning and implementation of local actions to develop an evidence-based strategy in order to accelerate further efforts towards the SDGs in their respective cities and regions. Against this backdrop, UNCRD has launched a project to develop a monitoring-and-evaluation tool package in collaboration with local governments and private companies that are already committed to the SDGs, in Chubu, Japan.

1. Held a Kick-off open webinar for national and local government officials interested in SDG monitoring tools.
2. Conducting interviews and survey with Nagoya City Government, Toyota City Government and the private sector
3. Organized seminars to present on selected indicators to measure the level of SDG achievement as well as the institutional mechanisms for promoting SDGs to get feedback. The results of evaluation for cities of Nagoya and Toyota, using those indicators were also presented.
4. Released the Handbook for SDG Monitoring by Local Governments: Part A for Evaluating the SDG Achievement at the Local Level; and Part B for Evaluating the institutional mechanisms of LGs for promoting SDGs.

SDG 11 is indeed an urban target, and 11 of 17 SDGs include targets relevant to cities. The monitoring and evaluation tool developed is therefore capable of assessing progress in the implementation of the NUA to some extent by replacing selected indicators and adding new ones to them.

The results of monitoring and evaluation will not only be compiled in a report for reviewing on the annual basis but also be visualized online in a form of dashboard that can be viewed and referred by various stakeholders, including the private sector, academia and citizens. Also as project outputs, case studies using these tools has been conducted in two selected municipalities of Nagoya and Toyota Cities to demonstrate usefulness and effectiveness of the tool package, and then it would also be utilized to support other LGs in Japan and other countries in their efforts to achieve the SDGs.

The developed package would enable LGs to evaluate and visualize the outcomes of their activities and projects towards the SDGs and provide feedback for improvement for future actions. It is expected that more and more LGs, which are interested in monitoring and evaluation of local SDG actions and/or voluntary local reviews (VLRs), will use the tools to effectively promote their own initiatives and projects while learning peer-to-peer so that their actions towards SDGs would be further accelerated.

UNCRD (United Nations Centre for Regional Development); Nagoya City Government (Local/Regional Government), Toyota City Government (Local/Regional Government); Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. (Private Sector); Esri Japan Corporation. (Private Sector); Nippon Engineering Consultants Co., Ltd. (Private Sector)