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This past spring, we travelled to our five partner communities across Canada — Halifax (NS), Kingston (ON), Kitchener (ON), the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region (BC), and Yorkton (SK) to connect with community members and municipal leaders on their work with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In each community we wanted to understand if people were aware of the SDGs, how they were being used, and if they were generally considered useful.

What a week it was at the United Nations for our Local Futures team! We’re home from the 2026 High Level Political Forum, energized by the effort and momentum to advance the SDGs all around the world.

With less than four years to go in the SDGs mandate, there was a strong message throughout HLPF that we must focus on the implementation of the SDGs.

We are excited to be joining the Canadian delegation to the United Nations next week for the annual global SDGs check-in conference, the High Level Political Forum (HLPF). 

With time running short for the SDGs agenda (ending in 2030), it’s clear the world still has a long way to go. No country in the world is on track to achieve them and progress has been far too slow. Yet there is a lot to remain hopeful for.

In May, we joined delegates from across the country at the University of Calgary for Together|Ensemble, Canada's leading conference on the Sustainable Development Goals. This year's theme “Mobilizing Local Action for Global Impact” kept the conversation returning to one question: how do we localize SDG action so that what happens in our communities adds up to lasting global change?

Our understanding of sustainability performance can change dramatically when we look more widely at the thresholds of our local sustainability systems. This approach using thresholds in sustainability measurement is known as context-based sustainability. We are very pleased to be partnering with Randy Sa’d to use a CBS approach in the Local Futures project.

We are thrilled to join this May in Calgary for the Together|Ensemble conference, Canada’s leading conference for collaborating and accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.