Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals : Emerging Measurement Challenges and Further Reflections
The Sustainable Development Goals recently adopted by the United Nations represent an important step to identify shared global goals for development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals are not as straightforward and easy to interpret a...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/340711557154138746/Tracking-the-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Emerging-Measurement-Challenges-and-Further-Reflections http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31668 |
| Summary: | The Sustainable Development Goals
recently adopted by the United Nations represent an
important step to identify shared global goals for
development over the next two decades. Yet, the stated goals
are not as straightforward and easy to interpret as they
appear on the surface. Review of the Sustainable Development
Goals indicators suggests that some further refinements to
their wordings and clarifications to their underlying
objectives would be useful. This paper brings attention to
potential pitfalls with interpretation, where different
evaluation methods can lead to different conclusions about
country performance. The review of the United Nations'
Sustainable Development Goals database highlights the
overwhelming challenge with missing data: data are available
for just over 50 percent of all the indicators and for just
19 percent of what is needed for comprehensively tracking
progress across countries and over time. The paper offers
further reflections and proposes some simple but
cost-effective solutions to these challenges. |
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