In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. Since then, the 2030 Agenda has shaped not only international development cooperation but also the design of national trajectories for sustainable social and economic development. In tandem with other global agendas adopted that year, such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda (see below), it is the global and regional blueprint guiding the actions of government and nongovernmental actors (UNESCAP 2020).

In line with the spirit of the 2030 Agenda, the term “localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” has been used to capture the importance of subnational governments (SNGs) not only for achieving national SDG agendas but also for co-determining such agendas. This is often described as “whole of society” approach where the commitment and contributions of all segments of the society (such as the public sector, the private sector, and civil society) are required to achieve the SDG targets.

According to the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asia and Pacific region had not been on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030 even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020. More than a year later, the ESCAP annual progress report puts it bluntly: “The Asia-Pacific region is not on track to achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030. On its current trajectory, the region may achieve less than 10 percent of the SDG targets” (ESCAP 2021:xi). This is an alarming assessment coming at the beginning of what has been termed the “Decade of Action” which was expected to see an acceleration of global progress in achieving the SDGs by 2030. In addition to this overall bleak assessment, the 2021 ESCAP report illustrates the unevenness of progress in terms of individual SDGs,1 in terms of the subregions, and in terms of individual countries