How Will We Measure The SDGs?

Here at CGD, we’ve been following the numbers on the Sustainable Development Goals: 17 goals, 169 targets, 1063 proposed indicators. We can now add a new number to that list: 230, the number of indicators that have finally been approved by the UN to measure development progress.

230 Indicators Approved for SDG Agenda – Casey Dunning

If the SDGs answered the “what” question of the 2030 development agenda, the indicators answer the “how.” But as CGD senior policy analyst Casey Dunning tells me on this week’s podcast, those 230 indicators raise new questions as well.

First, with 230 sets of data to collect, how are countries supposed to prioritize? The indicators are meant to create “a full and complete SDG agenda, not a menu of options,” Dunning says. However, with so many indicators, the menu approach may start looking more likely in practice.

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