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Nationwide ageing and dramatic depopulation threaten the survival of many Japanese small-sized towns and villages. To address this challenge—which is not unique but that in Japan is compounded by uneven urbanization patterns and increasing ruptures within the socioeconomic order—the Government of Japan is encouraging municipalities to adopt a pro...

Regions and places face unprecedented challenges that need ambitious policies to drive sustainable transitions. While the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been shaping the policies (or at least the discourse) of national governments and supranational organisations, there is...

In 2022, UNEP conducted a regional review of the Voluntary National Reviews (VNR) in Asia-Pacific covering 36 countries and 50 VNRs from an environmental perspective. For indicators, we developed a framework to review the environment-related indicators and data that were used in the VNRs. We found that t he overall coverage of the environment...

The UN 2030 Agenda charts out 17 interlinked Sustainable Development Goals that require a systems approach to their implementation. However, such a systems approach is new and challenging due to the broad coverage of social, economic and environmental dimensions and complex relations among 169 targets. There is a big knowledge gap about how the...

A Voluntary Local Review (VLR) is an instrument to review and follow-up progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), thus accelerating their localisation. Since 2018, a growing number of local governments worldwide are turning to the VLR process to articulate their sustainable development policies, highlighting the growing...

This study develops a map to identify SDGs and their targets within long term global scenarios of climate mitigation. This map is fundamental to analyse the alignment of climate goals with the SDGs, and the interactions with SDGs in long term scenarios. A methodology is proposed to identify and categorize the coverage and treatment of SDGs and...

SDGs form an indivisible framework. Achieving one goal or target may impact on achieving others. It is important to shift from the conventional siloed approach to an integrated approach by taking account the interlinkages between the targets and among the goals. To contribute to building the knowledge on SDG interlinkages and providing a practical...