Monitoring performance or performing monitoring? Exploring the power and political dynamics underlying monitoring the MDG for rural water in Ethiopia

Welle, Katharina

doi:10.1080/02255189.2014.877380

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In Ethiopia, pressure to perform at the national level led to the overestimation of access to safe drinking water in the Southern Region in 2007 (Welle 2014). Three methods were used for calculating access.…”

Section: The Politics Of Setting and Mobilising Targets And Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals

et al. 2018

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Target 7c of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG 7c) aimed to halve the population that had no sustainable access to water and basic sanitation before 2015. According to the data collected by the Joint Monitoring Programme in charge of measuring progress towards MDG 7c, 2.6 billion people gained access to safe water and 2.3 billion people to basic sanitation. Despite these optimistic figures, many academics have criticised MDG 7c. We provide an overview of this critique by performing a systematic literature review of 62 studies conducted over the MDG implementation period (2002-2015) and shortly after. Our objective is to contribute to the debate on the operationalisation of the Sustainable Development Goal on water and sanitation (SDG 6). The academic debate on MDG 7c mainly focused on the effectiveness of the indicators for safe water and sanitation and on the political dynamics underlying the selection of these indicators. SDG 6 addresses some of the concerns raised on the indicators for safe water and sanitation but fails to acknowledge the politics of indicator setting. We are proposing additional indicators and reflect on the limitations of using only quantitative indicators to measure progress towards SDG 6.

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Section: The Politics Of Setting and Mobilising Targets And Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals

et al. 2018

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“…Generalized, globalized arguments that underpin policy debates tend to remain disconnected from the everyday experiences of local people. For example, while SDG 6 is far more nuanced than the MDG in stating what constitutes an 'improved' water source by creating a 'service ladder' from 'safely managed' to 'basic', 'unimproved' and surface water sources, there is a large gap, as Welle's (2013) research in Ethiopia has demonstrated, between how global agencies, national agencies and local people understand, define and measure water access and inequality (see also Cumming and Slaymaker, 2018).…”

Section: Unpacking Sdgmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Environment in Global Sustainability Governance

2023

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after conducting research on the relation between climate science and politics at Harvard University's program on science, technology and society. His research interests include environmental governance, power relations and the politicization of climate change. Jens is the author of How Power Shapes Energy Transitions in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2017) and coeditor of Governing Climate Change in Southeast Asia (Taylor & Francis, 2021), and has published articles about non-state climate action, populism and the imagination.

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“…First, the report card function of the MDGs helped mobilize resources and political will butperhaps surprisinglywas less useful in demonstrating what was actually achieved (Fukuda-Parr & Greenstein, 2010;Welle, 2014). This stems in part from the specific baseline years selected for the various targets.…”

Section: Indicators As Report Cards and Management Tools: Lessons Fromentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 In addition, statistical methods and quality evolved during the 15-year life of the MDGs. In particular cases, 4 new statistical methods were debated politically as their implementation would reduce the perceived progress achieved and therefore reflect unfavourably on governments in power (Welle, 2014). Contextual circumstances such as population growth also had a significant impact on whether targets could be achieved with available resources, thus limiting comparability and accountability (Easterly, 2009;Hansson, 2014).…”

Section: Indicators As Report Cards and Management Tools: Lessons Fromentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This set of 230 global indicators will serve the double function of being a report card, measuring progress and performance, and a management tool that aims to 'help countries develop implementation strategies and allocate resources' (SDSN, 2015, p. 2). From studies of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the predecessors of the SDGs, we have learned that the indicators helped mobilize resources and political will, but that they often were less useful in demonstrating what was actually achieved (Fukuda-Parr & Greenstein, 2010;Welle, 2014). Used in a traditional performance management way, the indicators sometimes reduced complex issues into questions of one-dimensional measurement (Unterhalter, 2014;Yamin & Boulanger, 2014), reinforced silo effects and created perverse incentives (Fukuda-Parr & Yamin, 2013;Kabeer, 2015;Sen & Mukherjee, 2014;Unterhalter, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governance for sustainable urban development: the double function of SDG indicators

Hansson

Arfvidsson

Simon

2019

Area Development and Policy

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At the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the imperative of monitoring progress and holding policy-makers accountable. For this purpose, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 230 global indicators were established with the double function of being a report card and a management tool. In the light of a pilot study about the experiences of local planning officials in the City of Gothenburg, Sweden, in relation to the suggested indicators for SDG 11, 'Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable', and a comparison with findings in four other cities, the paper argues for a need to reprioritize indicator criteria to serve better governance for sustainable development in diverse urban contexts worldwide.

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Monitoring performance or performing monitoring? Exploring the power and political dynamics underlying monitoring the MDG for rural water in Ethiopia

Cited by 6 publications

References 15 publications

The Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goal on Water and Sanitation: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals

The Environment in Global Sustainability Governance

Governance for sustainable urban development: the double function of SDG indicators

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