Staff Reporter, Dhaka : National Institute of Local Government (NILG), organized a validation workshop on “Tools and methods of SDG localization for City Corporations and Municipalities of Bangladesh” at the capital’s Agargaon yesterday. Aimed to support the City Corporations and Municipalities with improved capacities to integrate SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) contributions and report on SDG achievements through the development projects, this tool has been developed jointly by a team comprising of experts from NILG, BUET and international arena. The intervention is part of “Improved Coordination of International Climate Finance (ICICF)” Project funded by German Federal Government’s SDG 2030 initiative and implemented jointly by the Economic Relations Division (ERD) and GIZ Bangladesh.

The developed tool and methodology were explained by the facilitators from NILG, BUET and international consultant team to the 30 participants attended from the local government, ministry, city corporations and municipality and prospective future trainers. Representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office’s SDG Coordinator’s Cell and Additional Divisional Commissioner (Revenue) of Dhaka took part in a panel discussion on the developed SDG localisation tool for the urban local governments.

Md. Akhter Hossain, Principal Coordinator (SDG Affairs) of the Prime Minister’s Office, was present as Chief Guest. Saleh Ahmed Mujaffor, Director General, NILG; Mohd. Monirul Islam, Joint Secretary (SDG Affairs), Prime Minister’s Office; Md. Shahriag, Additional Divisional Commissioner (Revenue) of Dhaka Division, and Dr. Firdaus Ara Hussain, Project Manager, ICICF Project- GIZ, among others were in attendance.

The component 3 of the ICICF project is supporting the development of a methodology and a tool for Localizing SDG’s with focus on climate action at the sub-national level in cooperation with the Prime Minister’s Office and NILG. Selected partner cities and municipalities are capacitated to access international climate finance and include the requirements of women and vulnerable groups in development project planning process. To involve the local level actors in SDG implementation in the context of adaptation projects, it is necessary to develop a method of inclusion in planning and implementation of SDG-related climate projects and ways of applying the developed tools and methods for SDG localization.

The workshop held in this regard aims to validate the training handbook that has been developed for the participants. Through this workshop, participants were able to develop an understanding of project planning to integrate SDGs in accordance with the local context. They also got an overview of the different modules of the training handbook and received demonstration of the excel based monitoring tool which has been developed to assess the achievement of urban local governments in attaining SDG targets.

At the workshop, Md. Akhter Hossain, Principal Coordinator (SDG Affairs), Prime Minister’s Office said, “SDG goals can only be attained through the active participation of this country’s youths and the development of a voluntary pool of senior intellectuals, who would guide the youths to be more responsible and engaged in SDG implementation”.

“We must focus on the disaggregation of data to determine who is left behind in the implementation of the SDGs.” said Mohd. Monirul Islam, Joint Secretary (SDG Affairs), Prime Minister’s Office.

In addition, he urged the urban local governments to promote the 39+1 indicators of Bangladesh in order to achieve more significant outcomes.

Saleh Ahmed Mujaffor, Director General of NILG, said, “Local level data is required for ensuring evidence based actions to be taken for achieving SDGs”.