Questions/Answers

○ Policy introduction - In 2019, Hwaseong started with the Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS) to set up the SDGs, making the private-public-industry-university joint proclamation for 17 goals, 66 targets, and 144 indices. - Hwaseong established the “Hwaseong sustainable development implementation system,” by which the individual activity-focused policy enforcement changed to the execution by the SDGs goal-centered collaboration and task review of the stakeholders and administration departments, to achieve the Hwaseong SDGs. This enhanced the administrative efficiency for sustainable development. ○ Issues to address - Hwaseong is a miniature of Korea, in which both cities and agricultural and fishing villages are present and the largest number of manufacturing companies in Gyeonggi-do are located. Rapid urbanization is underway with the population having quadrupled during the last 20 years, which raised the challenges to address socially, economically, and environmentally. Under the continued population influx and urban expansion and at this pivotal moment of creating a vision to become a sustainable city and preparing for the future, there is an apparent limit in the individual implementation process by respective administration departments. ○ Challenge - The unit activity-centered policy implementation is not an viable option for the integrated implementation that takes the policy’s social, economic, and environmental aspects into account. Consequently, an administrative system will be built that utilizes the SDGs to design policies and inspects the sustainability of activities with the examination of how they contribute to the SDGs goals and vision. ○ Target - Introduce a system that inspects the policy sustainability in advance - Prepare management cards to analyze Hwaseong activities for their connection with the SDGs - Complete an integrated digital management system for the Hwaseong SDGs (goal system, index, task, and data) - Establish an information sharing platform to engage the Hwaseong stakeholder in policies

- The administrative system of the Korean local governments is mostly based on the individual activities-centered implementation and evaluation, which may allow a unit activity deliver achievements with the measuring of a city’s sustainability hardly feasible. - Inspecting the sustainability at the planning phase of Hwaseong policies and inputting into the HS-SDGs for analysis will allow to understand the respective importance, priority tasks, and focused tasks of the 17 areas and also supplement the synergies and conflicts of individual activities.

○ The policy coincides with the UN SDGs Goal 17 “Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”and contributes to achieving Target 17-14 “Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development.” - Institutionalization: Work with civil societies and the city council to enact the Hwaseong Sustainable Development Basic Ordinance to implement sustainable development, hire external specialists to set up the SDGs and execution, and set up an in-charge department - Systemization: Work with the Sustainable Development Council (private organization) to find the local MGoS and engage them in goal setting - Policy decision: Have policies contribute to achieving the SDGs by establishing the administrative system (checklist, management card, and inspection platform) and pilot testing and connecting with the Hwaseong green new deal policy

- New administrative system of the SDG management card and pre-checklist was created to realize the 2030 agenda for the HS-SDGs. - The management card is to examine if activities considered the disadvantaged communities or the socially vulnerable communities and if they help mitigate social inequalities. Economically, the management card needs to inspect if the activities relate to the revitalization of sustainable local economy and, environmentally, if they considered the connection with the greenhouse gas reduction plan and how they affect the land and marine ecosystems. - The prepared management card is used to evaluate and inspect activities later.

○ Intensifying the civil society’s capability and reflecting their demand - Existing administrative plans has been prepared by the internal planning or a specialist outsourcing, making it hard to get the community on board and causing the conflicts of interest during execution. To make up for this, the stakeholders in 17 areas gathered for discussion and deliberation to set up the SDGs, which were applied to the long-term administration plan and made the policies more applicable to execution sites. ○ Laying the foundation for evaluating policies from long term perspectives - Policy inspection with the management card allowed to gather basic data that helped evaluate if policies were executed with consistency from long term perspectives. The MGoS evaluate the management cards, prepared early in the execution, for correction and supplementation. ○ Playing a lighthouse to consider policy diagnosis and implementation direction - Hwaseong connected 17 goals to key work plans and set the direction for a next year’s administration operation with policy diagnosis based on the SDGs, understanding the goals with policy capability concentration and ones lacking in the capability to adjust the linkages between activities. This helped execute activities efficiently with limited budget and administrative manpower.

- In 2021, the activities related to Goal 5(gender equality) accounted for mere 0.5% of the Hwaseong‘s key work plan. While the importance and necessity of the gender equality policy were high, the related budget and administrative planning was far less. As a result, the activities applicable to the SDGs Goal 5 surged to 1.4% of the 2022 key work plans. - The SDGs are further used as a tool to examine how the SDGs Goal 5 relates to the execution of Hwaseong‘s individual policies and what policies are required for this.

○ All Hwaseong MGoS, including the community, companies, and public officials, are behind the execution and practicing as well as the direct target of policies. - While the civil societies in Hwaseong had low-level organizational abilities previously, setting the common goal of the SDGs intensified their abilities through the process of publicizing and mutual discussion. The community members participated in the community work team and stakeholder workshops to understand the concept of sustainable development goals and act as a stakeholder, creating the Hwaseong SGDs ecosystem. - Due to the lack of understanding among the community members and public officials for sustainable development goal and sustainability, target-tailored education for concept building and awareness raising was delivered with online contents put in place. Participation and discussion-centered education programs were available to help 84% of the education participants for awareness raising and concept building, which will expectedly contribute to bringing fundamental changes for sustainable development.

○ (Development phase) Stakeholder governance setup ⇒ SDGs ecosystem creation ⇒ HS-SDGS setting ⇒ Implementation system establishment ○ (First goal) 2020 ~ 2030 (goal setting-execution-evaluation-feedback) ○ (Implementation process) Lead under the shared private and public roles and establish a support system, maintain mutually cooperative relationship in each process ○ (Organization system) Community, major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS), administration, Hwaseong Sustainable Development Committee - MGoS: Principal members in respective 17 areas, NGO, public officials, local communities, middle support organizations - Sustainable Development Committee: Overseeing governance organization → Comprised of mayor (chairperson), Sustainable Development Council members, city council members, and specialists ○ (Key contents) - Complete the local (private-public) relationship net, partner organization, and ecosystem - Revitalize the governance system, execute and achieve the SDGs, and establish a pre-inspection system for sustainability ○ (Progresses) - Apr, 2019: Hwaseong pushed for the SDGs (private and public implementation work group, community work team, and MGoS workshop put in place) - May 2020: The Hwaseong Sustainable Development Committee formed - Oct. 2020: Hwaseong Sustainable Development Goals (HS-SDGs) proclaimed and announced - Apr. 2021: Sustainability introduced (SDG management card and checklist enforced), public official-tailored education delivered - Jul. 2021: The implementation system established (Sustainable Development Committee deliberated and determined) - Sept. 2021: Won Presidential Award at the 2021 Korea Sustainable Development Award - Sept. 2021: Sustainable development goal management system established ○ (Monitoring and evaluation) Enforced pursuant to the Hwaseong Sustainable Development Basic Ordinance Articles 6 (sustainable development goal indices and sustainability evaluation) and 7 (sustainability report) [Master strategy: every 10 years/implementation and index: every 4 years/implementation evaluation: every 2 years]

○ Sustainable development education to brings changes to the public officials’ perception - Threatening to the sustainable development goal execution is the inflexible thinking of the public officials from the single department-focused activity implementation and Hwaseong put the sustainable development education in place to change this thinking system to the perspectives of society, economy, and environment. - The discussion-centered tailored education and weekly new online contents helped enhance the public official engagement and establish the necessity and concept of sustainable development.

○ Development of a sustainable development administrative system model for a local government to achieve the SDGs - Existing administrative system is restructured with 17 goals to contribute to enhancing sustainability and achieving the SDGs. - The sustainability pre-examination system (SDGs management card, checklist) eliminates barriers between departments, helping efficiency enhancement and the integrate thinking for society, economy, and environment. - The Hwaseong green new deal was pushed with the core strategies of SDGs to define the relations with policy activities, which became a practice case of applying the SDGs to activities with the inter-activity network analysis and convergence.

○ Referenced the case of other municipalities that led the sustainable development goal setting - After the national K-SDGs was set, many local municipalities, like Dobong-gu, Seoul and Dangjin-si, Chungcheongnam-do, set and implemented the localized sustainable development goals. Hwaseong referenced the cases of other municipalities, which preceded Hwaseong to push the SDGs, which had Hwaseong acknowledge the importance of private-public role sharing and cooperative relationship and establish the lead and support system from planning to evaluation. The outcomes and limitations of other municipalities’ cases were analyzed to set the direction for implementing the Hwaseong‘s sustainable development policy.

○ Established the Korea’s first digital sustainable development management system - Hwaseong created the Korea’s first online management system to internally apply the sustainable development goals to the administration from long-term perspective, not a fragmentary plan, enhancing efficiency and convenience. - As the SDGs’ achievement status and data management, task inspection by index, and monitoring implementation is structured in a circular fashion, calling for a systematic management. Hwaseong completed the integrated management system that allowed to view the SDGs implementation status of Hwaseong at a glance with the Hwaseong sustainable development digital management system.

○ Dissemination of the SDGs administration system model - Hwaseong introduced from the planning phase the SDGs implementation administration system for conversion to the sustainable development values and fundamental changes of the system and presented a new model for sustainable development as a local government, which earned Hwaseong the 2021 Korea Sustainable Development Award in recognition of this SDGs implementation system. - The sustainable development goals were applied to the administration, which will expectedly enhance the efficiency of administration planning, including budget prioritization and budget allocation. These success cases are being disseminated to other municipalities through the Korean Association for Sustainable Development and the Korea Local Governments Alliance for Sustainable Development. ○ Expansion into private and civil societies and public institutions - Starting from the administrative area, Hwaseong expanded the introduction of sustainability to private and civil societies and the city-affiliated public institutions, planning to implement targets that are reflective of the characteristics of individual groups. - The expansion of the sustainability application will expectedly facilitate practicing the sustainable development goal to take the implementation system up another notch.

- The application was completed with no issues found for policy advancement.

○ In-charge department and utilization of specialists: Sustainable Development Policy Officer - Specialists overseeing the sustainable development policies are placed in the administration to reach over the boundaries of departments and support the collaboration system with the SDGs. - The deputy mayor-reporting department in charge of sustainable development are in place to examine the social, economic, and environmental aspects, playing the role of internalizing the sustainable development values by carrying out the education, platform establishment, and study gathering of public official. ○ The SDGs policy budget is appropriated every year, based on the Hwaseong Sustainable Development Basic Ordinance.

○ Institutional foundation in place and systemization - The Hwaseong Sustainable Development Basic Ordinance stipulated sustainable development as a core principle of the administration with the sustainable checklist and management card applied to establish the administration system as a system of the SDGs perspectives, which was completed to a digital platform to improve the sustainability and efficient of the SDGs implementation. ○ Budget execution for development goal implementation - Hwaseong appropriate the sustainable development budget with own financial resources (100% city budget) with the city council and the community coming on board.

Oui

○ Evaluator: Ministry of Environment/ Korea Sustainable Development Award ○ Method: Document evaluation–online voting–presentation–final evaluation - The Korea Sustainable Development Award is a sustainable development contest organized by Ministry of Environment that started in 2000 to select and expand the exemplary cases among the cases from the communities, organizations, companies, and municipalities which practice the SGDs. - In 2021, 77 cases applied for the contest and Hwaseong won the highest President Award in recognition of the superiority of the implementation system establishment for sustainable development goals set jointly with the community.

○ Evaluation Criteria - (Local Future Award) Understanding of local challenges and resources, appropriateness of social, economic, and environmental policy goals - (Implementation System) Reflection of the sustainable development values in municipality administration, adjusting role in the administration, institutional foundation and institution, and resource availability - (Capability intensification) Stakeholder engagement in the system for education availability and processes - (Execution evaluation) Consideration of specific tasks, measures to expand the community engagement, and connection between the SDGs goals - (Achievement and ripple effect) Impact on the community life with specific achievements and expandability into other areas

○ Won the 2021 Korea Sustainable Development Award President Award - In consideration that the successful execution of the sustainable development goals requires converting to a system that internalizes the sustainable development goals across the city administration without focusing on activities and indices, Hwaseong created a systemized administration execution system along with a change of the public officials’ attitude. This excellence was recognized in the 2021 Korea Sustainable Development Award, a Korea’s largest sustainable development contest, resulting in having Hwaseong awarded the grand prize for the case of ‘establishing an administrative execution system,’not an individual activity. This helped intensify the SDGs-centered private-public solidarity by expanding the external and internal value and rapport for sustainable development policy implementation and instilling prides. - The award winning by Hwaseong bears significant implications for other municipalities, which want to set and establish SDGs, as a new model for executing SDGs efficiently. which is under proliferation through various academic societies and the local government networks. The central government department (Ministry of Environment) will produce a casebook with the case of Hwaseong‘s implementation system to distribute to 47 domestic and foreign institutions, media outlets, and relevant NGOs.

○ Contributed to strengthening the private-administration-civil society-public institution communication system - The HS-SDGs places importance on the connection and communication between internal and external resources. The SDG management card applies this to the governance and connection and connects to the common goal of the sustainable development goals for interaction by engaging various institutions and organizations of private, administration, civil society, and public institution and stakeholders, enabling the integrated and comprehensive thinking. ○ Implemented domestic and overseas networking as a member city of the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) - Hwaseong is a member city of the ICLEI, a world’s local government council for sustainability, and practices the local SDGs to take part in the global sustainable development, while establishing a global network in an effort to enhance the urban sustainability.

○ Established the MGoS (Major Groups and other Stakeholders)-based cooperative governance - The Hwaseong Sustainable Development Council, a private-public cooperation organization for local sustainable development, has been active for 20 years. After the UN SDGs were set, the Hwaseong Sustainable Development Council acknowledged that the engagement of various principal members and the private-public governance system are important to advance to a sustainable city, followed by organizing participants and creating a SDGs ecosystem for Hwaseong. - To set the sustainable development goals, Hwaseong organized a MGoS (Major Groups and other Stakeholders) group based on the Hwaseong Sustainable Development Council’s private-public implementation group and community work team, in which many principal members of 72 institutions – community members, public officials, specialists, and stakeholder - participated for respective areas. - The MGoS had 17 SDGs implementation strategy meetings and 4 workshops to relentlessly discuss and deliberate with the data gathered by the private-public implementation group and community work team, contributing to setting the Hwaseong SDGs. - Their involvement will go beyond setting the SDGs to developing community practice activities and finding cases. They will also join the administration for execution inspection and monitoring.

○ Sustainable development goals as a policy that extends beyond proclamation for execution and practice - Hwaseong established the ‘Hwaseong sustainable development execution system,’ which had sustainability reflected across the policies, strengthened the connection with the SDGs, and used the SDGs management card and checklist to examine the contribution-ability. - The sustainable development goals were localized and internalized with the help of the inter-departmental horizontal cooperation, change of the public officials’ attitude, conversion to the SDGs goal-centered execution system. ○ Future plan: Sustainability expansion → civil and private organization and public institution ⇒ other local governments - Hwaseong is pushing for the phased SDGs expansion. For 2022, Hwaseong plans to expand the application of sustainability to civil and private organizations and public institutions. - To make a city with no one left behind, Hwaseong will further strengthen the private-public cooperation system and expand the SDGs ecosystem, pushing for the information sharing with the community and the network intensification. - Hwaseong will strive for achieving the UN SDGs’ principle of ‘Leave no one behind’ by expanding the Hwaseong sustainable development execution system to a joint system with other local governments and disseminate to metropolitan municipalities, a state, and, further, overseas.