National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards

Schmidt-Traub, Guido; Kroll, Christian; Teksoz, Katerina; Durand-Delacre, David; Sachs, Jeffrey D.

doi:10.1038/ngeo2985

Cited by 423 publications

(262 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Weighting impacts of the outcome of the composite indicator as well as ranking of country performance therefore requires important considerations. This paper applies equal weighting similar to other research that has constructed SGD indices and indicators, particularly the work of the SDSN [26,27]. These prior analyses justified equal weighting for its reflection of the commitment by policy makers to treat all SDGs equally important.…”

Section: Normalization and Weighting Of Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, given time limitations, for the current paper this could not be done. Nevertheless, given that most SDG indicators and dashboards are based on equal weights as indicated above [17,27], the current analysis could spur discussions and improvements of monitoring and measuring of progress in the agriculture SDGs. Combining this assessment with the progress reviews of regional and continental commitments in the agriculture sector provide useful information that could be used to engage different stakeholders in promoting investments in different sub-sectors of agriculture to enhance performance and contribution towards achievements of inclusive and sustainable growth.…”

Section: Robustness and Sensitivity Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The arithmetic mean aggregation method has been widely applied in the calculation of composite indices such as the United Nations Human Development Index [23], Gender Development Index [23], baseline African Green Growth Index [28], Global Innovation Index [29], SDG indicator and dashboards for countries [26,27]. Other functional forms usually used for aggregation in calculating composite indices are the geometric average and Leontief production function [26].…”

Section: Aggregationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring Baseline Agriculture-Related Sustainable Development Goals Index for Southern Africa

et al. 2018

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Sustainable development has become the main focus of the global development agenda as presented in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, for countries to assess progress, they need to have reliable baseline indicators. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to develop a composite baseline index of the agriculture-related SDGs in Southern Africa to guide progress reporting. The paper identified eight of the SDG indicators related to the agriculture sector. The paper relies on data for indicators from five SDGs (SDGs 1, 2, 6, 7 and 15). Applying the arithmetic mean method of aggregation, an agriculture-related SDG composite index for Southern Africa between zero (0 = poor performance) and 100 (best possible performance) was computed for thirteen countries that had data on all identified indicators. The results show that the best performing countries (Botswana, Angola, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa) in the assessment recorded high scores in SDGs 1, 2 and 7. The three countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Madagascar) that performed poorly on both SDG 1 and 2 also had the least scores on the overall agriculture-related SDG composite index. The water stress indicator for SDG 6 recorded the worst performance among most countries in the region. Possible approaches to improve the contribution of agriculture to SDGs may include investing more resources in priority areas for each agriculture-related SDG depending on baseline country conditions. The implementation, monitoring and evaluation of regional and continental commitments in the agriculture sector and the SDGs are critical for achievement of the targets at the national and local levels. While the methods employed are well-grounded in literature, data unavailability for some of the SDGs in some countries presented a limitation to the study, and future efforts should focus on collecting data for the other SDGs in order to permit a wider application.

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Section: Normalization and Weighting Of Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Robustness and Sensitivity Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aggregationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring Baseline Agriculture-Related Sustainable Development Goals Index for Southern Africa

et al. 2018

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“…This assessment indicated that the 149 countries for which adequate data were available face fundamental challenges in achieving the SDGs. Both Index and Dashboards will be updated every year for monitoring progress (Schmidt‐Traub et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil organic carbon stock as an indicator for monitoring land and soil degradation in relation to United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

2019

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Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in September 2015 aim to end hunger and poverty, to protect the Planet, and to ensure peace and prosperity for all. The soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is a major planetary resource supporting many critically important ecosystem services (ESs) and underpins realization of some of the SDGs at the national level. Thus, decrease in the SOC stock is among the significant universal indicators for land and soil degradation and compromises efforts to achieve the SDGs especially those with reference to food, health, water, climate, and land management. However, there is currently no well‐established relationship (i.e., quantitative evidence) between the SOC stock and the level of ESs attributable to it. Further, basic soil data and monitoring systems including those of SOC stock and its changes are not available for many regions and nations. This uncertainty affects the suitability of using the SOC stock as absolute indicator to monitor changes in land and soil degradation and, particularly, in relation to the SDG monitoring framework. Thus, although the SOC stock is arguably an important indicator for land and soil degradation among others, more research and data on a national level are needed to establish the relationship between the SOC stock and the targets to monitor progress towards achieving the SDGs with reference to food, health, water, climate, and land management. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first review on the suitability of the SOC stock as an indicator for monitoring land and soil degradation with regard to the SDG framework.

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“…Studies using increments of global mean temperature increase vary in their choice of baseline [5]. Most of the studies assessing climate change impacts in Europe focus at fixed time periods, for example, mid-or end century [6,7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Avoiding Extremes: Benefits of Staying below +1.5 °C Compared to +2.0 °C and +3.0 °C Global Warming

Teichmann¹,

Bülow²,

Otto³

et al. 2018

Atmosphere

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Abstract:The need to restrict global mean temperature to avoid irreversible climate change is supported by scientific evidence. The need became political practice at the Conference of the Parties in 2015, where the participants decided to limit global warming to not more than +2.0 • C compared to pre-industrial times and to rather aim for a limit of +1.5 • C global warming. Nevertheless, a clear picture of what European climate would look like under +1.5 • C, +2.0 • C and +3.0 • C global warming level (GWL) is still missing. In this study, we will fill this gap by assessing selected climate indices related to temperature and precipitation extremes, based on state of the art regional climate information for Europe taken from the European branch of the World Climate Research Program Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (EURO-CORDEX) ensemble. To assess the impact of these indices under climate change, we investigate the spatial extent of the area of the climate change signal in relation to the affected population. This allows us to demonstrate which climate extremes could be avoided when global warming is kept well below +2.0 • C or even +1.5 • C compared to higher GWLs. The European north-south gradient of tropical nights and hot days is projected to be intensified with an increasing global warming level. For precipitation-related indices, an overall increase in precipitation extremes is simulated, especially under +3.0 • C GWL, for mid-and northern Europe, whereas an increase in dry days is projected for many regions in southern Europe. The benefit of staying below +1.5 • C GWL compared to +2.0 • C GWL is the avoidance of an additional increase in tropical nights and hot days parallel to an increase in dry days in parts of southern Europe as well as an increase in heavy precipitation in parts of Scandinavia. Compared to +3.0 • C GWL, the benefit of staying at +1.5 • C GWL is to avoid a substantial increase (i.e., an increase of more than five dry days and ten tropical nights) in dry days and tropical nights in southern European regions, while, in several European regions and especially in northern Europe, a substantial increase (i.e., more than two heavy precipitation days) in heavy precipitation days could be avoided. This study shows that a statistically significant change in the investigated climate indices can be avoided under +1.5 • C GWL compared to the investigated higher GWLs +2.0 • C and +3.0 • C for the majority of the population in almost all regions. Future studies will investigate compound events where the severity of single extreme events is intensified.

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National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards

Cited by 423 publications

References 25 publications

Measuring Baseline Agriculture-Related Sustainable Development Goals Index for Southern Africa

Measuring Baseline Agriculture-Related Sustainable Development Goals Index for Southern Africa

Soil organic carbon stock as an indicator for monitoring land and soil degradation in relation to United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

Avoiding Extremes: Benefits of Staying below +1.5 °C Compared to +2.0 °C and +3.0 °C Global Warming

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