Making Regional Sense of Global Sustainable Development Indicators for the Arctic

Abstract

Since the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, efforts are underway to identify indicators for monitoring progress. However, perceptions of sustainability are scale and place specific, and there has also been a call for Sustainable Development Goals and indicators that are more relevant for the Arctic than the global perspectives. Based on earlier and ongoing efforts to identify Arctic Social Indicators for monitoring human development, insights from scenario workshops and interviews at various locations in the Barents region and Greenland and on studies of adaptive capacity and resilience in the Arctic, we provide an exploratory assessment of the global SDGs and indicators from an Arctic perspective. We especially highlight a need for additional attention to demography, including outmigration; indigenous rights; Arctic-relevant measures of economic development; and social capital and institutions that can support adaptation and transformation in this rapidly changing region. Issues brought up by the SDG framework that need more attention in Arctic monitoring include gender, and food and energy security. We furthermore highlight a need for initiatives that can support bottom–up processes for identifying locally relevant indicators for sustainable development that could serve as a way to engage Arctic residents and other regional and local actors in shaping the future of the region and local communities, within a global sustainability context.

Rethinking Sustainability Monitoring in the Arctic by Linking Resilience and Sustainable Development in Socially-Oriented Observations: A Perspective

“…Most recently, the progress in sustainable development monitoring has been propelled by United Nations (UN) initiatives such as the Millennium Development Goals and SDGs [40]. The SDGs have an elaborate system of monitoring, and are proliferated globally, including in many Arctic countries, and seemingly entered the mainstream of decision-making processes [40,41]. The direct application of SDGs to the Arctic and their advantages and limitations are discussed in several recent papers [42][43][44].…”

“…While the SDG framework may be usable in the Arctic, to be truly valuable it must be localized, linked to local and Indigenous knowledge, embedded in local capacity-building, and substantially transformed to accommodate participatory and bottom-up information flows. The pitfalls associated with SDGs are also considerable, including a misuse and misinterpretation of indicators, potential political and special interest influences, and a possible onset of managerialism and neocolonial governance tendencies [41,45]. Still, the localized and interlinked use of the SDG indicators may be appropriate, especially in conjunction with other forms of monitoring, as argued below.…”

“…Monitoring, including SOO, is dependent on selecting appropriate indicators. Given the complexity of SES, a multifaceted nature of sustainability and the need to converge resilience and sustainable development thinking, designing sustainability indicators is especially challenging [41,48]. Similar to social indicators, sustainability indicators must be measurable, indicative, easily interpreted, and attainable for collection (cost effective) [45].…”

Synergies and Trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals: The Case of Spain

“…Mainali et al [22] performed explorative analyses of interactions in SDGs in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, van Soest et al [23] analysed the interactions between the SDGs with Integrated Assessment Models. National studies aimed to evaluate the actual situation of SDGs in Poland and Romania were recently published [24,25], and even assessing the SDGs indicators for the Arctic as Nilsson et al [26]. In the latest quadrennial report by Independent Group of Scientists appointed by the Secretary-General [27], the urgent need for carefully taking into account the interactions between goals and targets was highlighted.…”

Decolonizing Pathways to Sustainability: Lessons Learned from Three Inuit Communities in NunatuKavut, Canada

“…Sustainability planning is necessary for community and cultural survival in remote Indigenous regions, like those in NunatuKavut (coastal Labrador). There is increasing recognition within the sustainability science literature of the need for place-based sustainability goals in Arctic communities that align with Arctic needs, based on the fact that these needs may in fact differ from global responses and efforts [1]. The literature reveals that both Indigenous and sustainability sciences contribute to the sustainability of "resilient landscapes", and to our understanding of them [2,3] (p. 1).…”