SDG localization: finding the middle ground to top-down and bottom-up approaches with the help of digital networking

A growing literature on localization of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflects persistent tensions between a generic and aspirational global sustainability agenda and the challenges that local actors face in implementing these goals under very specific local conditions. Contributors to this extant literature have struggled to resolve this tension, in part because they have not recognized that a potential solution to the problem of local diversity is inherent within emerging networks of local actors themselves. This Brief Report proposes an empowerment of local sustainability actor networks with the help of a digital infrastructure for worldwide peer exchange. It advocates for a process of global empirical data aggregation on local sustainable solutions knowledge that would fully complement the top-down agenda of the SDGs.