Abstract
Despite multiple decades of research on sustainable development, a need persists to adequately address the local contexts within which development is implemented. Nationally based development measures often overlook important local and regional variation. This paper, guided by a localization framework, seeks to provide a model for leveraging existing development data to address this issue by responding to the following research questions: (1) What is the regional variation in Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the municipal level in the state of Yucatán, México? (2) How does that variation relate to state and national-level data? and (3) What are some potential local factors contributing to that variation? Descriptive statistics for each available MDG indicator were carried out across time and at different geopolitical scales. Then an MDG Index for each goal was calculated from those indicators, followed by a global Composite MDG Index, which combined the MDG Indices. Despite the poor availability of indicators associated with the MDGs at the municipal level, considerable scalar, temporal, and spatial variation was detected. The potential local level factors contributing to this variation were explored. International policies must be informed by and implemented using a localization framework if governments aim to achieve sustainable development across all scales.
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Data availability
The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. These datasets were derived from public domain resources and are cited in the methods section of the paper.
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The funding was provided by Texas A&M University and the state of Yucatán through the Yucatán Initiative, the Texas A&M University Liberal Arts Seed Grant, and the Global Intercultural Research Center at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
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Hopkins, A.L., Gibbes, C., Clement, V. et al. Analysis of sub-national variation in global development goals to inform locally relevant sustainable development. Environ Dev Sustain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03931-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-023-03931-5