Localizing the UN 2030 Agenda: IO technocracy’s engagement with territory-based approaches to data

Abstract In light of progressive criticism of the managerial ‘expert’ logic dominant in the development field, the article analyses how international organizations (IOs) increasingly seek to pluralize their knowledge by adding to their toolkit certain territory-based elements of participatory approaches to data, especially from the Global South. It examines how such attempts to pluralize IOs’ expertise translate in practice, by focusing on the localization processes of the UN 2030 Agenda in six peripheral communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that is, their development of territory-based targets and indicators for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The article contrasts these local practices with UN expert agencies’ approaches to data disaggregation. This comparison shows how datafying tools and processes may vary considerably, indicating important epistemological differences in how knowledge gets validated, with impacts regarding visibility and accountability. The territory-based practices analysed defy authorized forms of knowledge by making data not only for monitoring or for action but also for caring and for making live. The article concludes that localization gives the impression that IOs’ knowledge is becoming more plural, yet these changes remain at the surface only, with other knowledges becoming parts of standardized templates and merely complementing official data.