By Roberto Bissio
“Development” used to be understood as a linear progression from low to high, from poor to rich, judged by a single number, be that per cápita GDP or Human Development Index. Can the new BS/SDG Index become the golden number of sustainable development? Read more
by Roberto Bissio, Coordinator, Social Watch On the eve of a global meeting of experts from UN agencies and national
By Barbara Adams and Karen Judd
After two years of measuring for SDG implementation the emphasis has shifted from the pressure to develop a global indicator framework to the need for capacity development. This has generated a significant increase in interest in national statistical offices (NSOs) for data disaggregation, not only by income, gender and population group but also by municipal and neighborhood levels in an effort to ’leave no one behind’. The shift to implementation and capacity-building has also spawned a host of initiatives and partnerships, designed primarily to enable NSOs to integrate data from non-traditional sources, such as satellite imagery, mobile phones, and social media and scanning data.
Member States at the 49th session of the UN Statistical Commission addressed the work of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDGs Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) and the High Level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda (HLG-PCCB), along with a large number of other reports, ranging from household surveys and systems of national accounts to gender statistics, open data and big data for official statistics. Read more…
An “Environmental Performance Index” to be launched on May 9 at the UN claims to align itself with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but actually hides the impact of unsustainable consumption and production patterns in the North as well as the contributions of the developing countries to achieving the internationally agreed targets. Read more…
Bill Orme*
In the third week of June, diplomats reconvened in New York to redact and refine the draft text of the declaration to be announced next September to frame a new development strategy and officially launch the already informally agreed 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) . Sincere efforts to strengthen stated commitments to human-rights principles and official transparency and accountability will be met with counterproposals for more caveats and ambiguity in its few compliance requirements. Read more…
