Communicating Sustainability in Communicative City: Problems on Implementing SDGS in Indonesia

Sustainable Development Goals

The SDGs are global common goals, meaning they need to be applied to every country to achieve it. The government on Local or regional level also plays an important role in defining and implementing SDGs (Global Taskforce, 2016). As universal as it is, the goals that have been listed in the agreement itself mainly common and in a general meaning, without the detailed specifications as to how and what to achieve. This has become a problem especially in a country that still adapting to the changes from the Millenial Development Goals, which happened to be the root of the currently known SDGs. The problem of adaptation itself put forth another problem, that is the lack of participation and the gap of the current agenda in various countries. Indonesia, in particular, had to adjust its current development programs to the sustainability program which refers to SDGs. The adaptation process maybe not a problem for a core nation development program, however, it spells disarray in the regional and local area.

The disarray and confusions lead to one main problem, which is the losing sense of belonging of the SDGs. The sense of belonging itself has an impact on whether the government in local and regional area cares to implement or adapt the goals in their core development program. Meanwhile, the information contained in the SDGs was too much and not all easy to understand (Hoelman, 2015). This has been the main confusion as to how and what to achieve, as the document regarding the goals and target itself not been translated and understood until 2017. Hoelman (2015) state that the SDGs can be understood in a variety of different dimensions; (i) the chronology and process; (ii) its goals and targets and in it the scale of the changes it dreams of; (iii) negotiation process; and (iv) differences compared to its predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

There is known that there’s a different knowledge level that implied the concept of understanding SDGs itself. However, there has been an effort to solve the problem of different levels of knowledge from various stakeholders involved. One of the efforts itself is to encourage the success of SDGs in the regions by providing sufficient information to local governments (Hoelman, 2015).

The success of SDGs cannot be separated from the important role of local government. Because the city and district governments are: (a) closer to their citizens; (b) has authority and funds; (c) can make various innovations; and (d) spearheading public service providers and various government policies and programs (Hoelman, 2015). The local government is made as an important role in succeeding SDGs is driven by the fact that the decentralization in Indonesia makes, two-thirds of the fate and quality of life of citizens, in practice, is largely determined by the good and bad performance of local governments, ranging from environmental cleanliness, such as waste management, to the quality of schools and health services. We all depend on the high and low quality of public services in the area (Hoelman, 2015).

This is not only a symptom of Indonesia but also current at the world level. Referring to Benjamin Barber, in the book If Mayors Ruled The World (Barber, 2013), places hopes on the mayors at regional and local levels to tackle the world's major problems (climate change, terrorism prevention, poverty reduction, drug trade). The statements based on how they perceive the local governments as the power and energy of change.

On the other hand, however understandable it is, there is still underlying the core problem of why the SDGs itself is still not getting a smooth track of implementation, that is, to communicate it to all layers of stakeholders that involved. It has been stated that local governments play an important role in making the goals successful, however, the matter of communicating it to every layer is another problem to be solved.

Communicative City

Sustainability cannot be justified as a ‘business as usual’ and that to define sustainability, people have to speak the same meaning and under the same page (Washington, 2015). There is a means of communication to achieve sustainability, whereas there should be a base value of how we started and how we make it happen. Thus, comes the communicative city.

Jeffres et al. (2007) defines the communicative city as the growth of a sense of belonging (SoB) of the urban citizens to the activity of getting involved in preparing, implementing, and controlling urban plan. It also defined as the view that sees communication patterns where people connects with the cities they lived in, where the relationships between communication and the urban context is valued, so the people who design, plan, and manages the city may identify that their activities have an impacts on the patterns of communication and that it may affect the society and city in turn.

The importance of communication in developing a Sustainable Development can be viewed from many levels and perspectives, one of them is from the stakeholder's relations perspective. One of the reasons that to communicate sustainability is the core problem to achieve sustainability is that despite there are more of people that involved as a professional in sustainability, there’s still a need for specialists that trained in higher institutions to develop the research on the field properly (Leal Filho et al., 2018).

Furthermore, the existence of faulty networks, collaboration, and coordination between some institutions may prove a problem (Jäger, 2009). This has further recognized that in the Sustainable Development Goals document it stated that UN member states that adopt the SDGs document "will work closely with regional authorities and local governments"). This is a very clear marker of the important role of city and district governments in realizing SDGs throughout the world, as well as how to communicate it to the layer of stakeholders. However, the implementation of SDGs in cities and regions in Indonesia will face various challenges referring to how the decentralization and autonomy is the main idea of governing the nation, whereas the lack of communication patterns is the main problem of passing the idea from the centre of the city to periphery in other lands in the country. Therefore, it becomes a concern to see how close adapting the communicative city concept that helps to communicate people and the city plan with a concept of sustainability that became the basis of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Communicating Sustainable Development Goals

There are three challenges to be faced in implementing SDGs, namely communication strategies, financing, and preparing regions to adopt and implement SDGs in each district/city (INFID, 2018). Efforts to achieve SDGs targets are a priority for national development, which requires the synergy of planning policies at the national level and the provincial and district/city levels. The Ministry of National Development Planning (2019) in Socialization of SDGs Roadmap for Localization stated that as many as 94 out of 241 indicators in SDGs are already aligned with targets in RPJMN (Long-term National Development Plan) and has been existed as a part of the roadmap. The roadmap may be used to further localize the SDGs, which triggered local or regional governments to implement the Agenda at the local levels, while also supporting them and other stakeholders in turn (Global Taskforce, 2016). This further supported by Indonesia President's decree (Indonesia President Decree, 2017) that stated the roadmap includes Involving all parties (government, parliament, mass organizations & media, philanthropy & business, experts & academics) to work together under the roles, functions, and abilities of the parties. However, there is one flaw yet to be covered, that is to communicate the SDGs, to the so-called levels of stakeholders and community, which then covered with the communicative city approach.

The main issue of communicating SDGs in Indonesia is a matter of definition. In the SDGs, all 17 goals and 169 targets were made as universal as possible. However, the roadmap cannot be one-size-fits-all. INFID (2018) stated that “the issue of data and concept or definition has not yet been resolved in Indonesia”. For example, there is never a clear understanding of whether adequate means equality or sufficient. The concept will relate to data and information. Different concepts will produce different data. In fact, at present every national agency have different understanding on data and how to pursue SDGs in Indonesia. The Ministry of National Development Planning in Indonesia, however, has taken action to solve the matter of defining. In 2017, a document titled ‘Standard Translation of SDGs Global Goals and Targets’ has published by the Ministry, further solving one issue in implementing.

Indonesia National government took consideration of localizing the SDGs and published the Guidelines of Preparation of Action Plans in Implementing SDGs back in 2017, which consist of organization, job description, work mechanism, and technical steps for local governments in implementing SDGs. However, the matter of how to deliver and foster the participation of local government needs to be further emphasized. Thus, come the needs of what approach is suitable for communicating the goals. Based on the structures compromised by Drucker and Gumpert (Drucker & Gumpert, 2016), the goals can be segregated by five-category or structures that may directly (or indirectly) connects to the communicative nature of the society in the city: 1) Physical structure; 2) Infrastructure or the facilities and service that connected; 3) Social structures and the patterns or arrangement that aims to connect individuals; 4) Regulatory structure used to govern the city and societies; 5) Fictional and nonfictional portray of the structure of the imagination of the pattern.

The structures serve as a tool of audit that becomes the basis as to how can it (SDGs goals) be communicated through the structures. The assessment is done by assessing the indicator by each goal to the covered aspect or indicated aspect to be assessed in the target and indicator based on the indicator assessment in Indonesia. Referring to table 01 , it can be said that the SDGs goals heavily rely on Physical, Infrastructure, and Social structures which becomes the main valued indicator as those structures can be valued with quantitative data. Table 01 may serve as a basis on how to communicate and what interests must be put forward in communicating the goals to localize the SDGs.

Communicative Approach for Sustainable Development Goals

Communicative Approach has been used mainly on achieving a state where stakeholders, people, and cities are coordinated and striving the same goals. In the case of SDGs in Indonesia, the problem of communication arises as to the sectoral ego of the different government sectors. INFID (Hoelman, 2015) states that in Indonesia, the sectoral ego is also thick in funding and planning issues such as on SDGs. The Ministry of Finance in Indonesia acknowledges many institutes consider their institutions to be the most important and difficult to implement integrated targets. For example, the Ministry of Forestry does not talk about reducing poverty, even though the relationship is very close. This further becomes the basis that proper communication patterns, which aims to involve all parties in the planning and involvement of the implementation of goals, must be carried out by prioritizing common interests, perhaps achieved with a communication approach.

Jeffres (2010) in his paper Communicative City stated that the communicative city approach has 5 goals. The first one is that the communication patterns that exist in society and the policies that encourage would foster community attachment. Second, communication aims to connect people in society with a background that’s different where conflict may often happen as the case and that people interact most often with those who have more similarities as them. Third, the communication approach, policies, and patterns should be focused on helping the marginalized and disadvantaged people in the community. Fourth, communication patterns need to stimulate and support activity in the economic aspect of the city. Fifth, the system of communication has to support culture in the city, whether it be artists or organizations in the communities. Sixth, communication patterns should have introduced the new people and generations in the scope of community with its history and traditions. INFID (2018), also state that there are three models of a multi-stakeholder partnership model in Indonesia that can be a solution to problems and accelerate the implementation of SDGs at the central and regional levels, namely: (a) Information/Knowledge; (b) Implementation; (c) Standardization.

The existing literature of communication that explains the relations between organizations and media to an urban area is still always prone to generalization (Jeffres, 2010). In Indonesia, the means to achieve SDGs have been stated in the document of Guidelines of Localization of SDGs Action Plan as well as SDGs Roadmap. Both documents covered the same principle, that there are four steps to achieve localized SDGs: 1). Raising Awareness; 2). Advocacy; 3). Implementation; and 4). Evaluation/Monitoring. These four principles further emphasized that there are steps are to be taken to achieve localized SDGs, using any approach applicable, thus proposing a communicative approach.

Throughout the process, collectively, the produced information defined by the stakeholders may directly or indirectly be affected by the outcome of the process (Innes, 1998). By means, the stakeholders involved are presented by the definition of a problem and to solve it or think of a solution altogether. (Healey, 1997).

From the previous analysis, we conclude that information and the distribution of information plays a big role in achieving SDGs, and to arrive at the same basis of understanding of importance on SDGs is the basic means of consensus. Therefore, comes the role of the Communicative Approach, which becomes the tool to mediate and accommodate consensus.

The communicative Approach provides 6 pillars as a means to communicate or mediate to aid consensus-building efforts. Openness and trust are the most crucial aspects of building an agreement (Healey, 1997). Second, to state the objectives, underlying assumptions (Chakraborty, 2012) as it will be served as the main goals so the consensus got the fixed corridor to work on. Third, it is to assume every stakeholder involved in each position it takes to consensus building. Fourth, is to make the stakeholders involved to define the information and identify it by themselves, where it might help reducing biases that may happen by doing and analyzing things by only one discussion (Chakraborty, 2012). Fifth, as well as bring to the forefront any conflicts between the underlying values of the stakeholders (Chakraborty, 2012). And last, is to consider the commonalities between each region and stakeholders. After considering and acknowledge the aforesaid information, commonalities and the same values from different stakeholders may arise, then makes it easier to build the same understanding of the problems.

Communicative Approaches on Localizing SDGs in Indonesia must be seen as how the principles of the communicative approach help or support the steps on localizing SDGs. Based on assessment done on table 02 , Openness and Trust building may serve as a basis on how the regional government relies on the Central government and vice versa to rule their autonomy to implement the goals as the basis of the development in each own area. It also serves as a means of monitoring each own achievement in striving for the SDGs. Underlying objectives become the main core of raising awareness, as to how the objectives need to be stated as one whole goal to be achieved and are in importance in Indonesia, not only as a means of following the trends. The other principle also served it means to help further the steps of localizing SDGs in Indonesia as it may help in communicating the goals for a better implementation, given that the communication problem is taken on.