OECD on Locally Led Development

The OECD’s 2026 guidance argues for shifting greater agency and resources to local actors. The obvious reading is that localisation is about participation and fairness. The more consequential point may be that development systems are beginning to recognise that local actors hold information and institutional knowledge that centralised systems cannot easily reproduce. Bangladesh’s move to embed locally led adaptation in national systems is a useful example because it links community knowledge with government, finance and planning. That changes the role of international organisations from owning delivery to helping local intelligence travel into institutions. It also supports a wider idea: shared resilience depends on who can act on knowledge, not simply who possesses it. The question is whether funding and accountability systems will change quickly enough to match the rhetoric on local leadership.

Source: OECD, Practical Guidelines for Supporting Locally Led Development, 2026.