Localizing water and climate SDGs: comparative insights from Ecuador and Switzerland’s governance contexts

Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is critical for achieving global sustainability, yet translating international commitments into actionable local policies remains challenging, not least because interdependent goals require coherent implementation. This article examines how external pressure, local capacity, and local demand condition coherent SDG localization at the level of discourse, norms, and institutions. We focus on the coherence between water (SDG 6) and climate action (SDG 13) in Ecuador and Switzerland. Drawing on policy documents and expert interviews, we find that despite contrasting governance contexts, both cases converge on shallow localization, albeit through different pathways. In Ecuador, strong mandatory external pressure produces compliance without coherence, with SDGs referenced individually in planning documents but never jointly operationalized. In Switzerland, pre-existing governance frameworks absorb SDG language through legacy substitution, leaving water and climate management on separate sectoral tracks. In both cases, the presence of weak local demand suggests that neither external pressure nor administrative capacity is sufficient to achieve coherent and “deep” localization at the institutional level.