Sustainable development goals and indicators Flashcards
Concise timeline of SD
idea
1950’s - early warnings about resource supply limitations to development
1970’s - new concern: pollution of environmental sinks
1980’s - Development and Environment come together as SD in UN report Our Common Future (= Brundtland report)
1990’s - through divergent emphases on nature vs culture and efficiency vs equity, it becomes apparent that the concept SD is still ambiguous and plural. A common denominator: People, Planet, Profit
SD?
SS by de Vries
1) Everything is connected and subject to change
2) Resource management is inherently a collective affair
Goods and Services
SS by de Vries
excludability (payment or access)
v.s.
rivalry/subtractability (“non-rivalrous” i.e. migratory species and polar regions, or “rivalrous”, i.e. Common Pool Resources (CPRs))
public goods
“exclusive” goods (toll goods)
common pool resources
private goods
Externalities
SS by de Vries
effects of economic activities that are not, or not adequately, taken into account in the market allocation externalities (from economics)
Requirement for a sustainable society
SS by de Vries
● avoidance of risks at the macroscale;
● use of renewable energy sources as much as possible;
● limitation of the use of non-renewable resources;
● consumption < (natural) production;
● “contract” with nature (World Churches);
● keeping options open for future generations;
● protection of natural base;
● flexible, adaptive and solution-oriented management, technology and policy
Increasing focus on anthropogenic factor as addition to environmental NGOs’ focus on carrying capacity of the earth + economy/ecology debate (People, Planet, Profits)
Sustainable Development Indicator (SDI)
SS by de Vries
Role: guide the decision-making process after a goal is agreed upon
→ based on statistics, measurements (can limit what can be done with it)
→ quantitative numbers do not value subjective/relative importance of indicators → easy to compare and track over time
→ different scales and different aggregation levels
Sustainable Development Indicator System (SDIS) requires interdisciplinary efforts, needs to be balanced across domains, includes transparent models for context, is ideally participatory
Examples of aggregate indicators: Human Development Index (HDI); Ecological
Footprint (EF); Gross Domestic Product (GDP); Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
Poore & Nemecek: Five environmental impact indicators
- GHG emissions
- land use
- acidification
- eutrophication
- water use
Poore & Nemecek: Mitigation and practice change
High variation in impact among products and producers for five indicators, also in same geographic regions
Poore & Nemecek: Potential impacts of supply chain
- Processors, distributors, and retailers can substantially reduce their own impacts
- Food waste and food loss can be reduced by providing processors and retailers with information about the impacts of their providers
- Processing, more durable or reusable packaging, and greater usage of coproducts can reduce food waste
Poore & Nemecek: differences between animal and plant protein impacts:
- Emissions from feed production typically exceed emissions of vegetable protein farming
- Deforestation for agriculture is dominated (67%) by feed
-
Animals create additional emissions from enteric fermentation, manure, and
aquaculture ponds. - Emissions from processing, particularly emissions from slaughterhouse effluent, add a further 0.3 to 1.1 kg of CO2eq, which is greater than processing emissions for most other products.
- Wastage is high for fresh animal products, which are prone to spoilage.
Poore & Nemecek: Solutions!
- Dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers for all 5 indicators
- This can be done by diets excluding animal products, but also by a second scenario where consumption of each animal product is halved by replacing production with above-median GHG emissions with vegetable equivalents
- Widespread behavioral change will be hard to achieve in the narrow timeframe remaining to limit global warming and prevent further, irreversible biodiversity loss
- Communicating producer impacts allows access to the second scenario, which multiplies the effects of smaller consumer changes.
Generic properties of indicators
- are based on data and/or model output and linked to policy targets
- tailored to user base (different for single issue vs composite indicators)
- potential tradeoff between scientific accuracy and effective communication
- ideally, indicators should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) and broadly accepted
(see slide 12, lecture 10)
Misleading indicator example
Late trains:
- “late” if >6 minutes
- if train doesn’t run, doesn’t count as “late”
–> You can “fix” the indicator to make it look better, without actually changing the situation
SDG names & # of indicators
idea
- No poverty
- zero hunger
- good health and well-being
- quality educaiton
- gender equality
- clean water and sanitation
- affordable and clean energy
- decent work and economic growth
- industry, innovation and infrastructure
- reduced inequalities
- sustainable cities and communities
- responsible consumption and production
- climate action
- life below water
- life on land
- peace, justice and strong institutions
- partnerships for goals
& 232 indicators
SDG: definition
Defined in mid-2017
(PA 2015)
= sustainable development goals by 2030
- comination of aggregate and single issue indicators
- not all indicators are SMART and accepted
–> NEED FOR DATA for decision making and accountability
Data = information = knowledge
New tech increases data availabilty and access
= plan of action for people, planet and prosperity, and is determined to foster peace, strengthen global solidarity through partnerships, and eradicate poverty. All countries and all stakeholders
- based in part on human rights, un confs and summits, MDGs
- SDG framework crucially defines means of implementation of economic, social and environmental objectives, creating an overall integrated approach.
Obtaining data
Data revolution:
- new sources & types of data
- new ways of collecting data
- linking different sources of data
- sharing analytical results
- increasing access to data
Tier classification criteria
for indicators
Tier 1:
- Indicator is conceptually clear
- has internationally established methodology with available standards
- data are regularly produced by countries for at least 50 % of countries anf of population in every region where indicator is relevant
Tier 2:
- Indicator is conceptually clear
- has internationally established methodology with available standards
- data is not regularly produced
Tier 3:
- no internationally established methodology with available standards
- but methodology/standards are being developed/tested
Classes of data
- census data
- survey data
- administrative data
- geo-spatial data
- experimental data
- and so on….
Census data
- regularly occuring and official count of population
- all members are sampled (not a survey!)
- systematically acquiring and recording info from all members of a given population
- censuses happen generally every 10 years
Survey data
- designed to collect reliable data (eg. population of households)
- survey collects data from a (national) sample, eg. households
- may be confined to a particular region of a country, depeding on the sampling technique and sample size
- may provide sub-national estimates of a given characteristic of the population eg. poverty rate
Administrative data
- info collected primarily for admin puporses
- fundamental function of government
- collected by government departments and other orgs for the purpose of registration, transactions, record keeping
- civil registries record key event’s in a person’s life (birth etc)
- environmental data eg air, water, soil quality…
Geospatial data
- data linked with location data
- typically collected using GPS, remote sensing, cross-referenced survey data, cell-phone with internet connection
- generally analyzed in GIS
