IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ipf/psejou/v46y2022i4p459-487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The UN Sustainable Development Goals as innovation drivers for local sustainability governance? Examples from Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Raffer

    (Freie Universität Berlin, School of Business and Economics, Berlin, Germany, and German Institute of Urban Affairs, Berlin, Germany)

  • Henrik Scheller

    (German Institute of Urban Affairs, Berlin, Germany, and Freie Universität Berlin, Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Berlin, Germany)

  • Oliver Peters

    (German Institute of Urban Affairs, Berlin, Germany)

Abstract

Local governments are highly relevant for the just-starting socio-ecological transformation. Living up to this role requires new or adapted forms of governance. The German case provides a vivid example of how the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a useful framework for this transformation. In our policy-oriented contribution, we focus on the question whether the SDGs themselves are innovation drivers in local sustainability governance. We motivate this idea with the theoretical framework of public sector innovation and provide comprehensive examples of the most prevalent current approaches to SDG-related innovations at the German local government level, covering local government sustainability reporting, strategies, budgets, and financing. Our central finding is that a small group of early-innovating German local governments has already begun to govern sustainability with the help of SDG-driven innovations and that this became possible because of publicly funded support projects and accessible pre-defined localised SDGs.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Raffer & Henrik Scheller & Oliver Peters, 2022. "The UN Sustainable Development Goals as innovation drivers for local sustainability governance? Examples from Germany," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 46(4), pages 459-487.
    • Handle: RePEc:ipf:psejou:v:46:y:2022:i:4:p:459-487
    DOI: 10.3326/pse.46.4.2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.pse-journal.hr/upload/files/pse/2022/0/raffer_scheller_peters.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.3326/pse.46.4.2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kosa Golić & Vesna Kosorić & Slavica Stamatovic Vuckovic & Kosara Kujundzic, 2023. "Strategies for Realization of Socially Sustainable Residential Buildings: Experts’ Perspectives," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-31, April.
    2. Eunice Annan-Aggrey & Godwin Arku, 2023. "‘New Wine in Old Wineskins?’—Understanding the Framing of SDGs in the Local Government Context in Ghana," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 23(3), pages 229-245, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    sustainable development goals; local governments; public sector innovation; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • R51 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ipf:psejou:v:46:y:2022:i:4:p:459-487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martina Fabris (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ijfffhr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.