The international conference on “Measuring Sustainable Development” was held on 23-24 April 2015 at UN Plaza in New York City to debate the implementation of the evolving Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will be discussed by the UN General Assembly in September 2015. How can or should the implementation of these goals be monitored, measured and assessed?
The conference provided an arena for scholars and networks to share and contribute their expertise in addressing the environmental, political, economic and social aspects of monitoring and steering sustainable development.
Sustainable development researchers from some of the key actors, such as ICSU programmes, the Scientific Advisory Board to the UN Secretary General, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, etc. attended the event which offered opportunities for confronting science with practitioners in politics and civil society.
Main topics were Indicators and Monitoring, Assessment and Evaluation, Synergies and Tough Choices, and question of Ownership. IRDR’s Shuaib Lwasa has also been invited as panelist in the session on “Synergies and tough choices”. The conference was organized by the German Research Foundation DFG in close collaboration with the United Nations University (UNU).
IRDR had been advocating, all along the process that led to the recent intergovernmental agreement on the Sendai Framework for Action on DRR, that DRR activities must be seen as spearheading concrete measures to achieve SDG’s, see http://www.irdrinternational.org/3rdwcdrr/
Consequently, IRDR is currently working with ICSU and other partners on making sure indicator building and assessment work in both domains are compatible in such a way that science-based assessment can be better used.
