The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted at the United Nations on 25 September 2015, sets out a very ambitious plan of action for the future of our planet and humanity, with the overarching objective of leaving no one behind. At its core are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) comprising 169 targets. More than 193 countries of the world have agreed to work towards achieving these goals and have committed to put in place national strategies and plan to make tangible improvements to the lives of their citizens. But for the global community to have a chance of reaching the 2030 goals, we must also meet another goal: improving our data.
Across the full range of international concerns, from poverty and hunger through equality and climate action to peace and justice, we need good data to know where we are starting from, whether we’re making progress and what we need to improve. Data allow governments to make evidence-based decisions, and citizens to hold governments to account. In short, good public policy requires good data.
The SDGs are different: data are now recognised as central to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and the UN Statistics Commission is already supervising work on an official set of SDGs indicators. The SDGs Tracker presents data across all available indicators from the Our World in Data database, using official statistics from the UN and other international organizations. It is the first publication that tracks global progress towards the SDGs and allows people around the world to hold their governments accountable to achieving the agreed goals. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are defined in a list of 169 SDG Targets. Progress towards these Targets is agreed to be tracked by 232 unique Indicators. Here is the full list of definitions
OECD country assessments, peer reviews and peer learning mechanisms across a range of policy fields – economic, investment, environmental, energy, migration, education, development co-operation and more – play a key role in sharing learning and knowledge, improving policies and practices, and building trust and mutual respect among partners.
But let’s face it—national statistical offices and global agencies are not exactly hotbeds of innovation. The data revolution for SDGs is unlikely to be incubated within the halls of traditional statistical agencies, but rather by practitioners, civil society, the private sector, and even the beneficiaries themselves.
The substantial number of detailed comments received from all parts of the world and all areas of expertise gives us confidence that it is possible to measure the full spectrum of SDGs and their targets through a compact indicator framework. A sound indicator framework will turn the SDGs and their targets into a management tool to help countries develop implementation strategies and allocate resources accordingly, as well as a report card to measure progress towards sustainable development and help ensure the accountability of all stakeholders for achieving the SDGs.
We also need to keep in mind that all SDGs indicators need to be considered as an integrated package and must work in harmony with one another. Many prominent issues, such as gender equality, health, sustainable consumption and production, and nutrition, cut across goals and targets. The goals and targets are themselves interdependent, and must be pursued together, since progress in one area often depends on progress in other areas.
However, over the next 12 years as new ways of measuring the goals are tried out, these learnings could inform the formal review process led by the United Nations. Many of the issues debated simply cannot be determined in meeting rooms conferences and forums. The world needs a chance to “try on” these indicators, provide feedback as to how they are working, and use that information to keep refining them over time. On another hand, there needs to be a clear mechanism for providing space to those who are innovating on measurement, and a review process on the indicators that includes experiences and perceptions from around the globe.
