In Deqing county, situated in the Zhejiang region of China, efforts have been made to respond to the United Nation's call to continue working on the global indicator framework for SDGs at national and local levels. The initiative, implemented in Deqing county, aimed at exploring techniques to answer the question regarding "how can a local community implement the SDGs and what transformation actions can be taken", building upon lessons learned from the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), calling for increased data-driven measuring and monitoring actions at all levels.

Taking Deqing as a pilot area to measure and monitor the implementation of SDG-related policies, the initiative builds upon the United Nations Global Indicator Framework (GIF), which relies on a set of 234 indicators developed by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals Indicators (IAEG-SDGs). The GIF covers all 17 SDGs and 169 targets for the 2030 Agenda and is meant to work as a guideline for SDG monitoring and evaluation practices.

Actors involved

The initiative, which sets Deqing county at the center of an effort to set an example for other areas, was launched in 2017 by the Ministry of Natural Resources of China and Zhejiang Provincial Government and supported by the National Bureau of Statistics. The initiative also relies on the support from 20 subordinate departments, researchers from several universities and a wide arrange of experts from several domains, who assist the initiative with advice and guidance. The initiative, thus, reflects a multi-stakeholder effort towards localizing efforts and measuring and monitoring its impacts and results.

A spotlight for further localized measuring and monitoring

Since the inception of the initiative, it has followed a six-step plan that can be consulted here. Furthermore, the document also contains a list of results/outputs/impact, enabling and constraining factors and a final conclusion which highlights the relevance and positive results of Deqing's efforts, while providing an exemplary model for other countries and regions to follow.