PEOPLE-PARTICIPATION AS PART OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TOOLS FOR THE LOCAL LEVEL: TOWARDS DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED TOOL

Effective local-level planning, based on sustainability, is a present day global need, as urban neighborhoods serve as fundamental building blocks of cities. According to research, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, especially since their adoption in 2015, has been the lack of participation by local communities. To assess how people's actions and involvement affect sustainability, this paper critically examines Sustainable Development Indicators at the local level. Drawing from both international and Indian local level tools, this study suggests an outline or an integrated assessment tool that emphasises participatory elements associated with Sustainable Development Indicators to track sustainability initiatives at the local level. It does this by focusing on eight key indicators obtained from a literature review followed by factor analysis of twenty one sustainable assessment tools. These include the indicators of site planning, energy conservation, water and wastewater management, solid waste management, transportation, social factors, local governance, and innovation that have the highest factor loadings toward the sustainable development goal. The study also notes the occurrence of participatory aspects within each of the tools and their indicators and sub-indicators. It examines the nature of the participatory aspects by a detailed examination of compiled subindicators from a listing of the identied key indicators forming a potential integrated assessment tool. The aspects are ranked with respect to the 8 rungs of Arstein's ladder of participation. This identies that participatory aspects are ranked greater for local-level sustainable development indicators such as Solid Waste Management where individual behavior can directly inuence outcomes, and lowest for technically complex or institutionally rigid domains like Energy and Innovation. The study suggests that creating an integrated assessment tool based on participatory aspects of sustainability can be helpful in the development of a tool that can ll in the gaps related to this aspect in existing tools.