On September 25, 2015, 193 countries formally signed the Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, establishing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to drive comprehensive progress in economic, social, and environmental spheres.

In 2020, the UN launched the Decade of Action to accelerate SDG implementation, urging cities to conduct voluntary local reviews (VLRs) and submit localized sustainability assessments. Shanghai actively responded by initiating its VLR process in 2021, annually publishing the Shanghai Voluntary Local Review (SVLR) to systematically evaluate the city’s progress toward the 2030 Agenda, and full English versions of SVLR 2022 and SVLR 2023 are published on both UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)​​ portal and UN-Habitat website.

Since 2022, based on the mutual interest in compiling VLR, Shanghai and its sister city ​Espoo, Finland, have co-hosted the annual ​Shanghai-Espoo Sustainable Development Forum. This partnership has forged a ​​"Local Action-Sister City Dialogue" framework, enabling bidirectional policy learning and establishing a replicable model for global city networks.