NEW REPORT: Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals: Launching a data revolution for the SDGs 

A report to the Secretary-General of the United Nations by the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network

…with input from the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems

In September 2015, a summit of heads of state will adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The experience of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) underscores the importance of thinking through the indicators as early as possible; we cannot afford a lag of several years before we start to measure progress towards achieving the SDGs. The international community has rightly begun to shift attention to the indicator framework and associated monitoring systems. In June 2015, the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) will convene to start the technical work of defining an SDG indicator framework.

This report is offered as a contribution to the multi-stakeholder debate in support of the SDGs. It outlines how a comprehensive indicator framework might be established to support the goals and targets proposed by the Open Working Group on the SDGs (OWG). The report is the result of 18 months of intensive global discussions involving thousands of experts from UN organizations, academia, civil society, business, and a large number of national statistical offices (NSOs). The large 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. Read more…