Participatory planning for local sustainability guided by the Sustainable Development Goals

To achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), actions are required at all global, national, and local scales. To ensure coordination between scales, local actions need to be carefully planned to be aligned with global and national priorities. Local planning for sustainability must be adaptive and heterogeneous but also consistent and driven by the community. We describe an approach to co-create a local sustainability plan using the SDGs for a rural community in southeastern Australia using participatory techniques for co-creation, data collection, and review. The community placed a high priority on infrastructure for achieving sustainable growth and social equity while preserving their unique environment. By articulating their priorities in this community-led plan, the community is empowered to advocate for the sustainable development of their town with decision makers and funding bodies. If local communities create sustainability plans using the SDGs, then such planning will be consistent between and across geographic scales, and aligned with the global goals. This will also aid in achievement of the SDGs at national and global scales, as advocated by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.