Analysis of the possibilities of appropriation of SDG environmental targets in communal development plans : Case of the municipality of Abomey-Calavi in Benin

The success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends in part on the capacity of States and Governments, local and regional authorities, development partners and civil society to mobilize people, to communicate about the SDGs and to ensure that people fully support the SDGs. Thus, the commitment made by the Heads of State and Government in adopting this development agenda in September 2015 is to « Leave No One Behind ». Its implementation implies in fact, and as Article 55 of the UN General Assembly resolution on Agenda 2030 suggests, the contextualization of the SDGs at the level of each State-Part for the realization of the basic needs of the people at the base. This research builds on the Municipality of Abomey-Calavi, one of Benin’s seventy-seven municipalities, to examine the implementation of the SDG environment component. More explicitly, it intends to establish by means of appropriate tools and techniques a diagnosis of the appropriation of environmental targets of the SDGs in this commune, which for reminder is the most populous of the country. This research, on the one hand, showed that not all the environmental targets of the nationally prioritized SDGs are priorities for the municipality of Abomey-Calavi, and indeed all the environmental SDG indicators are not really filled in this municipality. On the other hand, the availability at national level of a number of policy documents and strategies related to the SDGs, as well as local and regional authorities in general and the municipality of Abomey-Calavi in particular should be able to use; since stakeholders in their elaborations, to really promote at the local level the achievement of the environmental targets of the SDGs