When policymakers want to know how a country or region is doing in education, health or employment, where do they look for information? Nationals statistical systems can be a valuable source for answers. However, they often provide only raw data. Without context or the necessary knowledge, it can be difficult to interpret them. This is why reports (official and shadow reports) play a crucial role in providing valuable insights about progress and gaps, in particular within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its achievement.

The current focus of SDG reports

Since the adoption of the SDGs, efforts to monitor and report on progress, as well as to identify the remaining gaps, are widespread. A variety of actors have joined the cause: international organisations, governmental and non-governmental organisations, cities, businesses and the investor community.

Reports from official sources, such as the United Nations (UN), provide the bulk of data to monitor the SDGs. The annual SDG Progress report, for example, presents a goal-by-goal overview of the world’s implementation efforts. In the same spirit, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung, annually publish the SDG Index and Dashboards Report that assesses where each country stands concerning their achievement of the SDGs. The report uses social, economic and environmental indicators from official sources. It also includes data from non-governmental organisations and independent research centres, helping to generate comparable scores and rankings among countries or regions.

Usually, these reports focus heavily on outcomes. They look at countries’ achievements and raise red flags when they fail to make progress. Although useful, this doesn’t necessarily allow policymakers to understand and address the causes of the challenges countries and regions face. The international community needs a better understanding of the processes that can lead to the desired outcomes.

Lessons learnt

The good news is that the global community has learned from the experience with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As a result, the notion of the interconnected nature of the SDGs has been widely accepted by both policy and academic circles. Now reports address more complex issues, such as the need for policy alignment or the existence of synergies and trade-offs that arise across SDGs.

For example, the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR) aims at strengthening the actions of the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), the main UN platform on sustainable development that reviews the implementation of the SDGs. The GSDR seeks to improve the science-policy interface. Another example is the Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development report. It addresses the importance of horizontal and vertical policy coherence, which is a critical strategy to break from silo approaches that limit the achievement of the SDGs.

Southern perspectives

Looking ahead, here are some areas that reporting initiatives could delve more in-depth to achieve the SDGs and as we move forward into 2030.

  • Improve evidence about progress on implementation. Reporting is highly concentrated on the official SDG indicators. This is important to the monitoring process of the 2030 Agenda. But it is also essential to understand which policies and practices countries are already implementing. For example, more data and evidence about the progress made in terms of policy alignment or institutional strengthening is crucial. It helps assessing countries’ and regions’ ability to adopt the entirety of the 2030 Agenda.
  • Showcase more evidence from the Global South. It is increasingly clear that even the right indicators are meaningless without context. Existing reports acknowledge for example that exclusion and progress look different in different scenarios. However, we still don’t know precisely how these situations look like or how they vary from country to country. Hence, more evidence from the Global South is vital. I will help further the understanding of the local and regional dynamics that are often lost in global reports.
  • Bring forward more “hands-on” experiences. Essential concepts such as ‘alignment’ or ‘intersectionality’ are progressively being mainstreamed into the global debate and national priority setting. That increases the need for the analysis of lessons learnt about how countries are adopting these principles and implementing them. Experience and knowledge sharing among states in the Global South can help governments come up with more context-relevant solutions and approaches to achieve the SDGs. These experiences should eventually become an essential part of reporting efforts on the progress of the 2030 Agenda.

Our grain of sand

With all this in mind, Southern Voice is currently preparing its new global report on the State of the SDGs. In it, we propose to look at SDG progress through a broader, more “global-south-oriented” approach. Instead of looking at outcome indicators only, the report explores implementation challenges at the national, regional, and global level. It does this by looking at critical issues such as:

– who is being left behind (LNOB),

– the existence of synergies and trade-offs across SDGs,

– and the impact of systemic global problems on national implementation efforts.

This upcoming report looks into implementation challenges as well, such as policy alignment, or institutional arrangements. With this analysis, which will be presented in July and September 2019, Southern Voice aims to complement existing reporting efforts from global partners and international organisations.

After all, reporting on the progress of the 2030 Agenda is a vital governance tool. It holds governments accountable for their commitments to the SDGs. Regular reporting exercises on progress towards the achievement of the SDGs can lead to better policy decisions. They are essential in shaping the global conversation on exclusion and in making sure that no one is left behind.

 

 

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