Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals

The briefing argues that cities are critical for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and presents an IISD tool that uses official Statistics Canada data to monitor SDG indicator trends in 13 major Canadian cities. Because global indicators cannot be directly applied to cities due to data limitations, the initiative identifies 12 specific indicators to track progress from 1995 to 2030. The tool aims to help policy-makers identify performance gaps, assess the feasibility of targets, and facilitate cross-scale coordinated action between municipal, provincial, and federal governments.

• Cities are essential for the implementation of SDGs because they can adapt sustainable actions to local needs, though global indicators developed by the IAEG-SDGs and UN Statistical Commission often cannot be used directly at the city level due to data availability and existing indicator lock-in.
• IISD has developed a tracking tool using Statistics Canada databases to monitor 12 SDG indicators across 13 Canadian cities, including Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Quebec, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, and Winnipeg.
• Analysis of data from 1995 onwards demonstrates that progress is not uniform across cities; for example, while tobacco use among young people is generally declining, some cities struggle to maintain this progress, indicating that success can be temporary.
• The document emphasizes that while SDG targets are set nationally, implementation is shared across different levels of government, requiring coordinated action between cities, provinces, territories, and the federal government.

APA

Bizikova, L., & Pinter, L. (2017). Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cities-the-engine-for-Implementing-sdgs.pdf

Chicago

Bizikova, Livia, and Laszlo Pinter. Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2017. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cities-the-engine-for-Implementing-sdgs.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Bizikova |first1=Livia |last2=Pinter |first2=Laszlo |title=Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=June 2017 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cities-the-engine-for-Implementing-sdgs.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{bizikova2017cities, author = {Bizikova, Livia and Pinter, Laszlo}, title = {{Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2017}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/cities-the-engine-for-Implementing-sdgs.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }