A growing number of city governments worldwide engage in sustainability reporting, voluntarily and responding to legal pressures. Diverse practices emerged based on unique choices concerning formats, periodicity, authorship and dissemination efforts. Such design questions and associated outcomes are highly relevant for practitioners yet unaddressed in standard guidelines and most prior research that primarily concern content and conjectured reporting benefits. This article presents a framework suited to assessing real-life practices and outcomes. An exploratory evaluation in Amsterdam, Basel, Dublin, Freiburg, Nuremberg and Zurich suggests that sustainability reporting can benefit organizational change, management and communication yet also lead to ‘fatigue’ and discontinuation.

The sustainability performance of cities is subject to an ever‐growing number of monitoring tools. While most initiatives work with outcome indicators that are generally associated with limited direct policy relevance, a minority of tools focuses on sustainability‐related processes and particularly local government policies. In this article, we explore the benefits, limitations and conditions under which this approach can function. While several process‐oriented tools offered to European local governments have lacked participation and foundered, the Local Sustainability Meter (LSM) has been widely used in the Netherlands, with close to 90% of all Dutch municipalities participating since 1999 in some of its multi‐year editions. An evaluative case study presented in this article shows that the LSM stimulated competition for policy performance, conceptual learning and the strengthening of local governance and inter‐municipal networks. The LSM's design choices of combining voluntary, transparent self‐assessments at periodic intervals with public rankings and awards proved to be an effective – and economic – way of disseminating sustainability policies. Its limitations include an inherent focus on generic, standardized policy prescriptions and little knowledge on actual sustainability outcomes. These findings are relevant for policy‐makers and developers of (local) sustainability monitoring tools. This study contributes to the growing literature on (i) sustainability policies and (ii) municipal monitoring and ranking tools. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Since the 1990s, many countries have witnessed the emergence of organizations publishing environmental, social, and quality-of-life indicators at a city level in order to promote public awareness, democratic participation, and sustainability policies. Many such initiatives are short-lived, however, and reasons for their success and failure under-researched. Using interviews, surveys, and documental data, we explored the survival rates, obstacles, and achievements of 49 initiatives in 10 Latin American countries. Contrary to those in other world regions, most initiatives have civil society stakeholders (notably universities, media, and businesses), excluding governments. Implementing citizen perception surveys proved effective to gain public attention. Several initiatives obtained name recognition and policy influence, which are significant achievements in megacities such as Bogotá, São Paulo, and Lima, where numerous NGOs vie for attention. Frequent obstacles include a lack of finances. After a seven-year period (2014–2021), 55% of the sampled initiatives remained active, ranging from 90% in Colombia to none in other countries. Organizational continuity appeared to be associated with network membership and discontinuity with diverging obstacles, including political pressures in some countries (e.g., Mexico), data scarcity in poorer ones (e.g., Bolivia), and a lack of sustained interest in relatively richer ones (e.g., Chile). Recent increases in socio-economic inequalities are strengthening the potential of community indicators.

This study examines the effects of sustainability-related data requests—spurred by the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)—on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands. Using a representative survey of 431 SMEs and 48 qualitative interviews with SME representatives and business stakeholders, the research provides a comprehensive overview of their experiences in late 2024. A key finding is that most Dutch SMEs (72%) have not yet received sustainability data requests. However, SMEs embedded in international value chains report more frequent and complex data demands, particularly concerning environmental indicators like CO₂ emissions and material use. Ratings of perceived relevance reveal a disconnect between external data requests and SMEs’ internal priorities, with many SMEs prioritizing health and safety over climate metrics. While some SMEs see data requests as opportunities for improved sustainability performance and market positioning, many also experience challenges, including limited resources, fragmented IT systems, and regulatory uncertainty. The implementation of CSRD highlights the urgency of supporting SMEs in building data management capacities and standardized processes. The study recommends clearer communication of data relevance, targeted support measures, and further research into cross-national and longitudinal dynamics to foster an effective sustainability transition across value chains.

Since 1994, Colombian mayors have been legally held accountable for election promises and goal achievement in office; non-compliance or underperformance may trigger recalls. In several Latin American countries, civil-society coalitions striving for urban sustainability have successfully lobbied for adopting similar rules in more than 60 cities. We conducted a longitudinal, comparative case study, based on documents and 16 interviews, to study the characteristics and effects of the accountability mechanisms emerging in Bogotá, Córdoba, Guadalajara, and São Paulo. Results show that goal-setting and reporting requirements are beneficial to urban governance in terms of increasing programmatic policies, intra-municipal cooperation, civil society involvement, and citizen participation. However, unintended consequences, including a rigid, short-term focus on targets at the expense of long-term objectives, were also observed. This suggests trade-offs concerning accountability and flexibility and dilemmas in the choice of indicators; outcome-based targets foster long-term, holistic policymaking yet output targets align more easily to local government competencies and citizen demands. The engagement of strong local civil society organisations facilitates the effective implementation of mayoral accountability mechanisms. Our findings offer insights to practitioners and researchers of democratic innovations and international policy frameworks including localisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The design of accountability mechanisms at the city level in diverse contexts and alternatives to the dominant model of voluntary goal-setting require further attention and research.