The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
Many risks are met first by cities, regions and communities: floods, heat, outbreaks, service failures and local conflict. Subnational governments often hold the closest knowledge and the operational duty, but not the revenue, legal authority or data to match. This page sets out how governance gaps develop between levels of government, how local institutional quality can be read, and which decisions belong to mayors, councils, regional governments, national ministries and local audit bodies.
GRF · Established · service level R0
Local government is the tier of public authority closest to residents, and with regional government it often meets risks first: floods, heat, outbreaks, service failures and local conflict. Subnational governments hold knowledge and operational duty but often lack the revenue, legal authority or data to match, and coordination across tiers fails under load.
For subnational governance, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water with relief in 3D and place names and borders from NASA GIBS, framed on Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For subnational governance, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water with relief in 3D and place names and borders from NASA GIBS, framed on Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Subnational governance · Council A · Meeting 19
| Risk appetite statement | P-754 | Approve | None | Discussing |
| New member admission | P-591 | Approve | Declared | Next |
| Safeguards annual review | P-587 | Note | None | Next |
| Data charter | P-789 | Consult | None | Done |
in place, of 12
Cities, communities and local institutions. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Responsibilities for services, planning and emergency management are decentralised while revenue, borrowing powers and technical staff stay central. Local governments become accountable for outcomes they cannot finance.
Metropolitan areas span many municipalities, special districts and agencies. Risks such as flooding, transport failure or water shortage cross their boundaries, while planning and budgets stop at them.
Local councils often lack independent audit, active local media and a resourced opposition. Weak scrutiny lets procurement irregularities and deferred maintenance accumulate unnoticed until a service fails.
In an emergency, local, regional and national bodies each act on their own legal basis. Unclear lines of command, incompatible information and disputes over cost delay the response where it is needed most.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Multi-level governance | Shared decision-making across local, regional, national and international tiers of government. |
| Own-source revenue | Revenue a local government raises itself, such as property taxes and fees. |
| Unfunded mandate | A duty assigned to a lower tier of government without the resources to carry it out. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subnational share of public expenditure and revenue | share of general government total | annual | OECD-UCLG World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment | OFFICIAL |
| Own-source revenue of local budgets | share of local revenue raised locally | annual | Local government accounts and national statistics | OFFICIAL |
| Local disaster risk reduction strategies | share of local governments with strategies aligned to the national strategy | annual | Sendai Framework Monitor, target E | REPORTED |
| Local government audit coverage and opinion | audited entities and opinion type | annual | Supreme or regional audit institution reports | OFFICIAL |
| Local budget transparency | key budget documents published, by type | annual | Local government publications | OBSERVED |
| Local open government commitments | number of commitments and implementation stage | per action plan | Open Government Partnership local programme reviews | REPORTED |
| Local election participation and competition | share of registered voters; candidates per seat | per election | Electoral management bodies | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| OECD-UCLG World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment | Comparable data on subnational structure, responsibilities, spending, revenue and debt | Free, attribution |
| OECD Regional and Metropolitan databases | Regional and metropolitan statistics on economy, services and well-being | Free and open, attribution (OECD terms) |
| Sendai Framework Monitor | National reporting on local disaster risk reduction strategies under target E | Free, attribution and UNDRR terms |
| Open Government Partnership local programme records | Local action plans, commitments and independent review reports | Free and open, attribution |
| Regional and local audit institution reports | Financial and performance audits of municipalities and regional bodies | Public records, terms per audit institution |
| Subnational PEFA assessments | Public financial management assessments of subnational governments | Public reports, terms per assessment |
Governance Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Mayors and city councils | Which risks the city owns, which it shares, and what it needs from other levels | Multi-level responsibility maps, local finance data, comparable cities |
| Regional governments and metropolitan bodies | How to coordinate planning and investment across municipal boundaries | Jurisdictional maps, cases of cross-boundary risk |
| National ministries of local government and finance | How to align transfers, borrowing rules and mandates with local responsibilities | Comparisons of mandate with revenue, OECD-UCLG data, audit findings |
| Regional and local audit bodies | Which local entities and functions to audit for risk management and service continuity | Audit coverage, opinion records, service failure cases |
Decentralization transfers responsibilities to subnational governments, but often without matching revenue, staff or legal authority, creating unfunded mandates. Cities may be responsible for flood management while national agencies control river basins, or for emergency response without control of the utilities on which it depends. Metropolitan areas often span many municipalities with no body responsible for the whole.
Local governance includes more than local government. Community organizations, traditional and religious authorities, residents' associations and informal providers govern access to land, water, security and dispute resolution in many places. Effective local risk governance often depends on how formal and informal institutions work together.
Cities also act beyond their borders, through networks that share practice and through commitments on climate and resilience, raising questions about how such commitments relate to national policy and accountability.
Fiscal capacity often decides outcomes. Local governments that depend on transfers from national budgets may struggle to plan multi-year resilience investments, and access to borrowing or insurance can be constrained by credit standing and legal limits. These constraints shape what local leaders can realistically do, whatever their mandate says.
Crisis coordination reveals the arrangements most clearly. When an event exceeds local capacity, authority and resources move up to regional or national levels, and the speed and clarity of that transition, and of the return afterwards, are decisive for outcomes.
Mapping responsibilities across levels of government; formal and actual roles often differ.
Analysing local revenue and spending against mandates.
Participatory research with residents and local institutions.
Limits: local data are often scarce and inconsistent, and practices that work in one city may not transfer to another with different powers.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.