Agenda 2030
Deliberation on Sustainable Development Goals
Deliberation on the post-2015 sustainable development agenda are taking shape and the negotiations on scope and financing of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) are becoming more concrete and contentious at the same time. Sustainability has been a concern for several decades and has gained greater importance in light of increasing climate warming and continued instabilities of the social and economic sectors at global levels. Two separate UN processes are underway to determine the SDG framework namely the HLPF (High Level Political Forum) and the OWG (Open Working Group) both working on defining and negotiating the world's Sustainable Development Goals. In addition,various stakeholder groups (NGOs, Business, Civil Society, Academic Institutions) and International Organisations have started their own discussions on what issues and priorities should be core features of the coming SDGs.
To be able to agree on a single integrated framework is critical to ensure successful progress towards the definition and implementation of the SDGs. Concrete goals need to be set at national, regional and global levels and concrete financial resources need to be committed for SDG implementation. The issues and themes that will have been identified as being top priorities will set the stage for policy choices concerning sustainable development goals and determine the world's progress.
CSEND, a think tank focusing on the development nexus of trade, poverty, employment and social equity, is contributing to these deliberation through its engagement in both the global, national and regional levels.
This policy brief discusses how UNCTAD and UNECE could meaningfully cooperate in improving the robustness of SDG 17.17.1 indicator and to find ways to improve this indicator’s status from a Tiers III to a Tiers I indicator.
Christian Kingombe & Raymond Saner, December 2018
“Organising Monitoring of SDG based on the three principles (transparency, inclusiveness, participation) and following wikipedia methods using ground truth ICT techniques” panel organised by Raymond Saner during the 2018 ITU-WSIS conference.
The organizer first explained the 2030 Agenda's description of evaluation and monitoring of the SDGs by national and subnational governments. As a next step, the method of ground truth was presented as possible approach to organise monitoring based on the 2030 Agenda's principles which are transparency, inclusiveness and participation. Panels subsequently presented their views as to how monitoring could be organised using ground truth methods such as wikipedia or other ICT based interactive methods. Questions from the floor were encouraged to broaden and deepen the discussion at the same time. As a second step, a case example of a LDC was given and panelists described their use of the Ground Trust Method. The panellists were Prof Raymond Saner, Director Diplomacy Dialogue, CSEND, Geneva, Dr Lichia Saner Yiu, President, CSEND, Geneva, Mrs Barbara Rosen Jacobson, Research & Project Associate and Alexandra Sicotte-Levesque, head of IFRC Community Engagement Unit. The session was moderated by Mrs Beris Gwynn, founder of INCITARE, Coppet, VD, Switzerland.
16th International Conference and Fifth Diaspora International Conference of World Association for Sustainable Development (WASD), both co-organised and hosted by the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) in the United Nations Palais de Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, 10-13 April 2018. http://www.wasd.org.uk/geneva2018/program-2018/
Presentations given by Raymond Saner on “ Implementing the SDGs by subnational governments: urgent need to strengthen administrative capacities” and by Lichia Saner Yiu on “ Measuring Progress of SDGs Implementation: Monitoring Process & Improving Coherence & Coordination”
The international agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals signed in 2015 specify that the SDGs will be implemented by national governments and that countries should also embark on SDG implementation at subnational level such as municipalities or provinces. This paper focuses on SDG implementation at local authority level of large cities and explores the needed competences and capacities in goal attainment. Within the time span 2015-2030, changes of political leadership will be inevitable and hence continuity and policy coherence will be essential to make SDG implementation successful by 2030. The 17 SDGs are interdependent goals requiring effective inter-ministerial policy coordination and equally effective consultation with the private sector and civil society stakeholders. Developing effective mechanisms of coordination and consultations takes time and can be easily overturned subsequent to a change of government and administrators putting the sustainability of the society and gains from SDG implementation at risk. The authors describe the main features of the SDGs and of urban development and suggest that an application of ISO 18091 could be a practical method to ensure continuity of administrative performance needed to sustain implementation of the SDGs at local authority level.
The United Nations (UN), in association with the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) Mona, The Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade (MFAFT), Jamaica hosted a regional conference under the theme: “Caribbean Development – The 2030 Agenda in Perspective” at the Jamaica Conference Centre, June 28-30, 2017.
Thought piece for the Think 20 Dialogue as a contribution to the G20 Germany 2017 process on “The 2030 Agenda: No Poverty Reduction without Policy Coherence” by Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu.