Can the SDGs indicators become a policy tool at the local scale? A Support study for the Regional Strategy of Sustainable Development in Lombardy

In 2022-2023 as members of the research unit in the CST - Centro Studi sul Territorio “Lelio Pagani” of Bergamo University, we leaded a study financed by ANCI Lombardia (the regional branch of the Italian Association of Municipalities) on the role of the local institutions in the implementation of the Regional Strategy of Sustainable Development (SRSvS) for Lombardy Region, in the larger framework of the Sustainable Development Goals of UN-Habitat. The research focuses on the tools and the knowledge need by the administrations, aimed at strengthening the Administrative Capacity Building (ACB) of local governments. In this light, we deepen on two main issues: - on the indicators and the role assumed in the regional strategy as a support in local government decision-making processes, - on the potential that indicators could have in the definition of planning and innovative forms of collaboration in territorial governance, at local and supra-municipal scale. During the development of the study, we assumed the perspective of the small and medium municipalities (almost the 70% of the 1.506 municipalities in Lombardy have less than 5.000 inhabitants). Therefore, we assumed that a large part of local institutions can’t afford analytical-quantitative tasks, because these operations are very demanding in terms of resources and processing capacity, and, there is a lack of technical competencies and resources at this level to develop those assignments. The first step of the research was a critical reading of current approaches to the indicators development and how they should be useful tools to support the definition of integrated strategies and planning, not only for quantitative analysis. This reading concerns both the general role of indicators in the field of SRSvS and, when possible, a potential and innovative application within the strategy. The study was carried out through a comparative methodology and made it possible to trace a state of the art on the development of regional indicators and dashboards in the Italian regions (and two autonomous provinces). We identified some recurring issues (fields of analysis, scales, use of dashboards and indicators in decision-making processes, etc.) and how different institutional bodies involve indicators in their policies development. Therefore, we introduced the municipal perspective, recognizing limitations and potential of current tools. Through them, we recognized the critical aspects of consolidated approaches and to outline a roadmap to overcoming them. This in-depth study, carried out thanks to a bibliographic analysis and a set of interviews with administrators and civil servants, made it possible to define the needs and the priorities expressed by the territories, when they implement the SRSvS. The third part of the research includes a selection of indicators based on a multicriteria analysis. They came from available data, that could be adopted by the Municipalities to develop actions and policies, in the framework of the regional strategy thanks to a dashboard powered by Lombardy Region, aimed at support all the local administrations in this effort. In the conclusion, we reflect about the effectiveness of the indicators in representing the conditions of the municipalities in the field of sustainability and how they can report their evolution. Local bodies could use a dashboard based on the proposed set as a support for their policy design paths, and to compete for regional calls for actions in the field of sustainability. From the regional perspective, the region could use the dashboard as a protocol for certifying the results achieved and the impacts expected from the proposed projects, in a rewarding perspective that could support the implementation of further interventions in the territory and access to additional resources for their development.