SDSN-JICA Workshop on Post-2030 Agenda Indicator Framework

minutes to also hear participants that are joining online. So, thank you very much for joining us uh today. This is kickoff workshop of a an important initiative um with by the UN sustainable development solutions network and the Japan International Cooperation um agency. uh research institute we're very honored and to have here with us of Jaka president Tanaka and also professor saxsn this is a a two years initiative that um aims to provide a platform for thinking about the post 2030 framework so we have a very rich uh agenda for today with many experts from the UN various groups that are also thinking about those issues. Governments many and many participants we'll also hear from a number of process happening further ado provide opening remarks. >> Well, thank you very much. Uh good afternoon uh to those around this table and maybe good morning and good evening to some of those on the online. Uh I'm Akihiko Tanaka, president of Japan International Cooperation Agency. Um it is a great uh pleasure and a distinct honor uh to be with you uh today. Uh at the outset uh allow me to express my sincere appreciation to SDSN and Sunway University for co-organizing this important workshop. Uh especially of course professor Jeffrey Sax, president of SDSN and professor Matan Dan Sana Pro Vice Chancellor Sanbay University. I'm also uh deeply grateful to all the speakers and participants joining us both here uh in person and online particularly uh professor uh PB Kundi co-chair of the independent group of scientists for global sustainable development report 2027 uh professor MB Joanini member of the UN high level expert group on beyond GDP uh Mr. Mr. Navin Hanife, Assistant Secretary General in UNDESA and Mr. Spazam Kaspani, director of the National SNG uh center Malaysia. I want to begin by reflecting on why this particular uh partnership is so crucial particularly at this uh time moment in time. The world looks very different today uh from how it did in 2015 when the sustainable development goals were first uh adopted. We now see conflicts uh in many regions uh regional geopolitical tensions and increasing divisions. The spirit of international coh cooperation that characterized 2015 uh has in some way weakened. Uh yet I think the importance of the SDGs remains unddeinished across the world. Uh countries continue to face deepseated and shared struggles protecting the health of people, improving education, raising living standards, and contending with global issues such as climate change and infectious diseases, struggles that no single nation can manage on their own. In this context, JA remains firmly committed to working in partnership with the developing countries to advance the SDGs. More fundamentally, we are committed to realizing a world that leaves no one behind. A world where every individual can live with dignity free from fear and free from want. This reflects the principle of human security that lies at the very core of Janka's operations. Guided by this principle, Janka implements a wide range of development cooperation initiatives uh through 20 issue focus strategies known collectively as what we call the Jika global agenda. As part of our global agenda, we mobilize resources through diverse modalities including technical cooperation, grant aid, concessional loans, and engagement with the private sector to deliver tangible and lasting impact on the ground. Looking ahead, beginning in September of next year, the United Nations supposed formally initiate discussions on the international framework for sustainable development beyond 2030. Dika intends to contribute actively and constructively to this global process. To proceed effectively, good intentions alone are not enough. We must be guided by robust evidence and act on lessons learned from implementing the SBGs. The post 2030 framework must be built not only on aspirations but also on practical experience and careful analysis. Recognizing this, the Jaika Research Institute has been advancing research on the post 2030 indicator framework since 2023. This research draws extensively on the knowledge and experience gained through JA's field level interventions. Today marks an important step forward in this endeavor. We are delighted to partner with SDSN in advancing our research work. Under the capable stewardship of Professor Jeffrey Sax, SDSN has produced highly influential research and policy guidance over many years. By combining SDSN's global network and intellectual leadership with Jaika's vast operational experience, I have the highest optimism for what we can achieve together. Let me now turn to the substance of our research. I would especially like to highlight what I see as three key challenges associated with the current SDG indicator frame and some questions that the post 2030 framework must address. But first I need to acknowledge the remarkable strides made because of this species. The existing framework sustainable development >> very hidden >> with its 70 goals, 169 targets and over 230 indicators is comprehensive and represents an unprecedented global consensus. One of its most significant contributions has been to broaden the scope of development thinking. The framework has to some extent encouraged the policy makers, practitioners and researchers to look beyond sectoral boundaries and consider interconnections across all 17 goals. This has been a truly important conceptual advance. At the same time, we must be forthright about the challenges we face. The first concerns how well the framework captures interlinkages among goals. In actuality, development outcomes are inherently interconnected. Health outcomes for instance depend not only on health care systems but also on water and sanitation, infrastructure and education. While these interdependencies are widely recognized, the current framework is largely organized along sectoral lines. This can result in fragmented approaches with different stakeholders for focusing on their respective areas without sufficient attention to cross sectoral impacts. The post 2030 framework should therefore incorporate mechanism that encourage more integrated and interdisiplinary approaches. The second challenge relates to the design of the indicator set itself. Here we face a fundamental tension between simplicity and comprehensiveness. While the current framework includes more than 230 indicators, the reality is that development is far more complex than any finite set of indicators can fully capture. At the same time, such a large and intricate framework poses practical difficulties. Many indicators require disagregated data, sophisticated methodology or substantial financial resources for data collection. Some remain experimental and in many cases complete data coverage is simply not feasible. These dilemas point uh in different directions. Still there may be a way through our understanding to reconcile them. One approach would be to establish a streamlined core set of global indicators applicable to all countries while allowing greater flexibility for individual countries and regions to develop additional indicators tailored to their specific contents. Although such flexibility actually already exists, it could be further strengthened in the post 2030 frame. Third challenge extends beyond designing indicators to safeguarding the broader data infrastructure that underpins the entire system of sustainable development monitoring. We recently witnessed concerning disruption involving a critical source of data for SDG monitor. Truth be told, the withdrawal of support from the demographic and health service or DHS program is already having detrimental effects. It is a reminder that data systems like the DHS program constitute global public goods. Without sustainable and reliable support mechanisms, they risk disappearing altogether. Countries that depend heavily on external funding for data collection are particularly vulnerable. At the same time, we must explore innovative approaches to data. Emerging technologies offer significant promise. Satellite data, for example, can provide objective and increasingly frequent information on land use, air quality, and greenhouse gas emissions among others. Likewise, big data and AI generated data hold considerable potential. Of course, however, we must also remain mindful of possible biases, particularly in data derived from digital uh platforms and social media. Whatever approaches we pursue, the indicators we develop must be scientifically sound, reliable and practical while also remaining cost effective. Balancing these requirements would not be easy. But that is exactly the sort of complication that forums like this are meant to confront. Allow me to conclude with a few remarks on the purpose of today's workshop. In my understanding, this gathering has two main objectives in my mind. first to share our joint research with a broader community of stakeholders engaged in data statistics and policy for sustainable development and to build new partnerships for the future. Second, and equally important, to learn from your insights and experience the invaluable knowledge and practical perspectives that we bring to bear are essential to advancing this collaborative uh research. I'm confident that today's discussions will provide us with deeply constructive guidance. In closing, uh I have outlined three key challenges for the post 2030 framework. Capturing interlinkages, designing meaningful and practical indicators and strengthening data systems for sustainable development monitoring. None of these challenges are simple, but this workshop brings together precisely the varied expertise needed to address them. I hope that today's discussions will be pragmatic, candid, and forwardlooking and that by joining together we can make meaningful progress toward a better future for all. Thank you very much. Jeff, >> thank you very [clears throat] much. Gil, thank you for organizing this session. And Dr. Thank you for the partnership and uh for being here. We're very honored and very grateful. And to everybody that is joining, thank you for being part of this brainstorm. Let me uh share my views of where we stand and uh what our priorities should be at this stage. We are uh uh 11 years into the SDGs and uh less than four years to go. Um and what we know is that uh on most indicators there is some progress but on very few indicators is there the pace of achievement that was set out in 2015. on uh about [clears throat] one sixth of the uh indicators there's actually reversal and uh unfortunately that involves some of the key environmental indicators uh which are uh not only uh in retrogression but potentially are in uh approaching irreversibility. In other words, we could really tip into extremely dangerous ecological territory uh very abruptly. And the planetary boundaries framework has helped us to understand the tipping points that are approaching or maybe are already uh underway but not yet fully apparent. So the basic overwhelming message is that not enough has been achieved since 2015. But because of underlying technological progress, peace in most parts of the world, definitely not in all places of the world and a development orientation of most governments in the world. things are not standing still or even uh uh going backward. They are going forward but very uh unevenly uh and um unsatisfactorily. The second point is that there is very uh strong evidence that the basic framework of sustainable development meaning the need to combine economic progress as typically measured by GDP growth with social well-being as measured by indicators of access and distribution with environment. enironmental sustainability remains absolutely as strong and urgent as it was in 2015 if not far more so because of rising inequalities and rising anxieties about those inequalities. So the basic orientation of the world's governments to sustainable development as a concept that combines economic, social and environmental objectives remain strong. I typically visit 40 or 50 countries in a year I would estimate and I see no uh backlash against the framework uh anywhere other than in the United States which is in a kind of political backlash more generally against the international system. I think no matter what the world had uh agreed on the US would be against it. Uh it happens to have agreed on sustainable development. So the US is against that. In other words, this is more of a temper tantrum, a focus on sustainable development specifically. But more generally, I don't see any backlash against broad concepts or the idea of uh globally agreed goals or the idea of global cooperation to achieve them. There is a lot of frustration. There is worry about the viability of the United Nations especially because the host country is assaulting the UN institutions in a number of ways or abandoning them. But again my feeling is that there is a worldwide broad consensus on the need for multilateralism, the need for the UN charter, the need for the UN institutions, the need for global partnership and the need for sustainable development. So I don't see any uh broad movement anywhere to replace this agenda. This raises a key question. what to do when goals are uh still uh deeply subscribed to when some progress is being made. when the strength of our uh technologies to achieve these goals is actually dramatically stronger than even 10 years ago because the AI revolution and the revolution in lowcost green technologies it has been as dramatic as anything we could ever have hoped for back in 2015. So the ability actually to get this job done is greater than ever not worse than ever. It raises the questions of uh what to do and how to proceed. And my view is that um there are a group of issues that are especially important but that our dominant theme up to 2030 and after 2030 should be implementation. That this should be the focus. We should come to grips with the shortfalls of implementation and we should focus our collective attention on how to strengthen implementation and we should both demonstrate and hold to the view which I very much subscribe to that success in the emerging economies is also success for today's highincome economies. So for Japan, the success of ASEAN or the success of Africa is not a threat. It is actually one of the great impulses for progress. And I think that this is generally true. The idea that there is some kind of zero sum struggle in the world uh and that the success of others is either irrelevant or enimical to one's own country's success is wrong at an economic level. Of course, at a moral level, I would say it's wholly wrong. Uh because morality teaches us help even at a cost. But this is help at a gain. Uh so I believe that there is no case whatsoever for abandoning the ideas of development cooperation. But the question is how to make them most effective. So what are the problems today in implementation? First, this is not a simple agenda. Uh this is not doing one or two things and correcting a problem. We've had big crises that actually had relatively straightforward solutions once we landed on them like the chlorofhluocarbons and ozone depletion. that turned out to be substituting one class of chemicals with a another class of chemicals that was closely related. It actually was adopted when the single company that dominated Dowo chemical went from CFC's to HFC's. Then they said buy our new product you could get out of the old product. But that was saving the planet with one device. uh taking uh lead out of gasoline was a global success story because it was a technological fix. The challenges that we're facing are bigger than a single technological fix. they go to uh the institutional as well as the technological uh operations of our countries to move to a zerocarbon energy system is not simple. Uh the fossil fuel-based energy system was built up over 150 years and uh it will take 50 years to uh move beyond it. And it's not just the legacy and lobbying effects. It's the complexity of what to do, how to do it, how the new technologies will work amplified by the fact that the technologies are changing rapidly. So every time you think you know what you want to do, a better technology comes along and you say, well maybe I'll wait for even even better technology to come along. So the complexity is very real. We have identified six basic transformations that are needed. Uh in brief uh mass quality education is the first that involves technological changes as well as social changes. Second is health care and healthy lives which goes all the way from nutrition to lifestyle to environmental health to uh health care in its more narrow sense. The third is green uh energy and industry which is a suite of technologies especially green electrification uh and electrification of transport and industry [clears throat] plus hydrogen economy green hydrogen. Uh the fourth is sustainable land use and agriculture. Uh which is again a large suite of complex changes [clears throat] with many stakeholders, tens of millions at least. Um also dietary changes uh so different production systems. But land use is very controversial of course but needs significant change because we're on a path of mass deforestation, destruction of fisheries, uh disappearance of uh of wetlands and so forth. The uh fifth area is the future of cities because we will add another two billion people to cities in the next 30 years almost all in Asia and Africa. And um many of these are cities that are hardly functioning right now because they lack the urban infrastructure and uh or they lack the social infrastructure. If we were in Singapore a couple of days ago, it's quite remarkable. 80% of that country's housing is social housing. Uh this is of course a unique feature of Singapore, but it's astounding. uh in some places there's almost no social housing. They're just slums. So that's the fifth area. And the sixth area is the digital transformation. And I would say now the digital and AI transformation. If there were to be any new goals added to the 17, the only one that I would recommend would be an 18th goal on AI because it's so pervasive, so transformative, so deep, so much in need of governance control. uh it's so difficult, so challenging that I think there's a legitimate case for an 18th goal. We could get rid of the box in the lower right hand corner of the diagram and just instead of saying STGS, it would say artificial intelligence. So it fits the diagram. You don't have to change anything more. Uh it would be 6x3. It would all be much easier uh than 17. The only other thing in the world that has 17, by the way, other than the STGS, is the locust cycle, which is a 17-year cycle for certain locusts also because it's a prime number. Uh, and so it escapes an evolutionary, uh, fix apparently, or so I'm told. So, uh, basically six big transformations and these require planning because everyone is part and private. Everyone is a public private interface. Every system has public infrastructure and private ownership and this is complex. Um I vote for the return of MITI in a very big way. Uh I vote for the United States to have a MITI which we never have had. Um we need planning now because the issues require planning. uh and we've tried to do this without planning on market basis and markets are powerful instruments but uh they're not sufficient. So first point I would make is this is complex. One way that we can simplify the complexity is not to uh imagine that the agenda is less difficult but we could dramatically simplify the number of indicators uh that we're using for metrics. Uh and of course uh uh this is how we first started speaking with Dr. Sando about this. Um and for us we showed that 17 indicators rather than 150 capture in rank order correlation over 0.9 of having the full suite. If you put life expectancy for SDG3 or uh high school completion rate for SDG4, you capture almost everything you need to capture. It's nice to have 10 or 20 indicators uh to look at, study, to refine, but it could simplify tremendously the uh the monitoring part. But I think public investment side shouldn't be simplified. It should be elaborated. Uh and it's not elaborated now. Most governments don't do this or don't know how to do this. Um and I think it's an area of major focus. The second major focus that I would argue for is regional cooperation as being much more important than we typically ascribe in how we discuss these issues because we're very much a nation statebased world governance structure. The UN is member states, the IMF and is member states. uh the World Bank lends to member states not to regions but ASEAN as a region needs to move forward. The African Union as a union by leading principle of economics I call it my Sax's law number one is be nice to your neighbor and have them be nice to you. Uh because this is how real economics is done is in the neighborhood. uh so this is something that I think we should emphasize more institutionally organizationally we should do things at a regional level we should make plans at a regional level we should finance at a regional level in other words as needs an interconnected grid maybe it's a special purpose vehicle that has all the governments as stakeholders so you create an ownership system that is a joint ownership system of 11 governments to own the grid, not simply bilateral negotiations. But without going into any particular case, the regionalization I think is extremely important. The last point of implementation I believe that is essential is the global financial architecture. And there's a basic point for perhaps as much as 60% of the world population access to finance is not the major issue because the large countries generally are creditworthy. Maybe they could uh improve their ratings a few notches, but generally they can finance this agenda. But for maybe 40% of the population and maybe 60% by count of country or even 70% by count of country, countries are not credibly in the literal sense. Uh they're below the investment grade. There's no way to tell them just go out to the credit markets to solve your problem. They can't. And our official finance is inadequate, hugely inadequate. And there have been a dozen major studies of the inadequacy of the official financing. There are many uh solutions to this. I believe I don't think we have a shortage of global saving. Uh global saving is on the order of $30 trillion a year. There's a lot of surplus saving. Japan remains a high saving country. Uh China remains a high saving country. There's lots of saving in Asia. There are ways to raise saving. provident funds and so forth I think are very useful institutional ways to do this but the money doesn't get channeled to the poor countries and there are two arguments and I'll be brief and just end here one is that that is intrinsic risk and these are just riskier countries and [clears throat] the IMF follows that line and tells these countries basically don't borrow uh I I have a different view which is that there are many kinds of risks but they're not intrinsic to development itself. There's currency risk. You're borrowing foreign currency typically the US dollar. If the US likes you, it'll give you an emergency loan. If the US doesn't like you will cut you off at the neck uh and provoke a financial crisis. So there are currency risks uh political risks but generally I believe development is a high return activity and that if we if countries are enabled in peace if they have a good plan if they can work with their neighbors if they can get 30-year loans they should borrow a lot more than they're borrowing right now because the returns to having electricity or a high school education or a highway or a rail or a port are very high and they're much higher than the cost of capital. So my view is we should be encouraging long-term finance. It could be market-based. It doesn't have to be ODA as traditionally defined, but we need go into the next phase not like we did this time with a nice set of goals, but with a deliberate intention. these investments will be financed. This is what the partnership is. We will find long-term financing to enable the major transformations to take place. So, I'll just end by saying I'm an adventure of optimism. Uh I don't view the world economic situation as even fragmented to put it that way. I regard one country as having a temper tantrum. Behaves like a child. Uh it throws things around. Unfortunately, they're bombs rather than toys. Uh but for the most of the rest of the world, there is an intention to move on in a serious way with this agenda. And the technologies are superb. The ability to uh make major transformations is remarkable. our tools are better than ever. I think Jika can play a huge role and I'll just end by saying Japan played a huge role in the 1960s7s and 80s in this region. For example, ASEAN cannot even remotely be what it is today if Japan had not made outward investments in Malaysia, in Thailand, in Indonesia. Transform this region. It taught the rest of the world, including Singapore, [clears throat] including Hong Kong, and then included China, how do you grow rapidly? Because it was the Aicada income doubling decade that showed how to actually do this. But that was just copied from the major restoration. So Japan invented rapid growth by the way and and uh and and my point is this was hugely beneficial for the Japanese economy. Uh and so if anyone asks is Jaika good for Japan I would say hugely good for Japan not only historically but going forward because it's the major impetus for green growth for the next 30 years and the more one is engaged in that the more the returns will be. So I'll stay there. Thanks very for being here with us. You both have obligations and we'll have to leave with us. But thank you very much again. Very honored to to have you here. We will continue with the next steps on the agenda. We'll hear in a second co-chair of the 207 UN is for global sustainable development. I believe my colleagues will escort you either by also. So, Phoebe, um, get ready. We'll get to you in, uh, just a minute. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Just just 30 seconds. Uh, >> of course. we will move on to the next uh part of the the workshop for today. Um we will hear from professor Konduri and then I will provide um a brief introduction and share a bit more perhaps background on each of the uh different parts uh for today's meeting. Um sorry yes uh just a logistical announcement. We've been able to set up uh event Wi-Fi for everybody to join who's not from Sunbury [snorts] label event in lower cases. you you should find it on your Wi-Fi list. Thank you. Go ahead. >> Very good. Thank you, Jeremy. So, Phoebe, the floor is yours and then I will provide a little bit of background about the rest of the workshop for today. Phoebe, over to you. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, Gon. Thank you to SDSM, Professor Jeff Free Saxs and all of uh SDSN's partner around the world for are really leading the uh implementation of the agenda on the STGS. Um can you see my slides because I think it will help uh >> Excellent. So I've been working for almost 30 years on systems transformations and um what is important to understand is something that was um indicated by both professor Slacks and the um opening speech that in order to uh really implement the STGS a very holistic framework we need to understand the interaction between nature economy and society and build on that understanding uh transformation pathways that will lead us to uh achieving the agenda. Uh so um I've been working with SDSM framework for more than a decade now and I'm chairing the sustainable development solutions network global climate hub where we exactly work on this uh systems transformations and um a year or so ago I've been appointed by the UN general secretary to co-chair the United Nations global sustainable development my report. So I will briefly introduce you to this report. uh what are our thoughts about this report and you will find that lots of the things that have been said now lots of the things that have been written in the SDSN uh uh global report that was uh launched a few months ago maybe less than a month are very consistent with what will be in this uh global sustainable report. Okay. So what is this global sustainable development report of the UN? This is the flagship scientific assessment of the UN on the progress on global sustainable development. The job is to synthesize state-of-the-art evidence from natural and social sciences from all regions of the world and understand the progress that has been achieved with regards to implementing 2030 agenda and also how this progress can be further enabled. Uh the report is prepared every four years by an independent group of scientists appointed by the UN general secretary [snorts] and is a report that is formally requested officially requested by all UN member states and will be one of the main documents for the deliberations of the um summit on SD the GS that will take place in 2027 in September. This is the group of scientists. I am consharing the report with Adana G. And let me also give you the history of this report. Very important. Uh two reports before our report 2019. We focus on synergies and tradeoffs. understanding the interplay and interlinkages between the goals and targets. 2023 was about acceleration the scurve the so-called scurve where we discuss emergence acceleration and stabilization of changes that can support the implementation of the STGS and 2027 report is about transformation and implementation overcoming systemic barriers to integration building continuity frameworks focusing on introducing frameworks and structures and implementation capacity that um tackles inequalities and um reinforces accountability. And of course, one basic element of this report that makes it probably the most important of the three that um are on the cards now is that we are looking at the beyond 2030 framework because 2027 the report will be launched. Uh there will be no other report before the 2030 deadline. So this report will provide also recommendation for the beyond 2030. Let me also tell you that as a global SDR uh scientific group we have done a lot of regional consultations in the Asia Pacific region in the European region in many countries across the world we've launched an open call for stakeholder inputs. H there is a summary report priority issues that have been identified in these open calls that we uh receive hundreds and hundreds of uh inputs is that very important climate energy food water biodiversity nexus and how we implement this nexus on the ground digital and AI transformation sustainable finance education institutional has to be overcome. Strengthening data systems uh transforming uh towards a circular economy. Uh tackling structural inequalities uh local action and community integration, stakeholder engagement and of course the climate health equity nexus which all of them have been measured by professor Saxs already. So these were the results from the global uh consultation that we did with regards to our report. The emerging focus areas are understanding pressures combound conflict Arabic technological shifts structural inequality shape sustainable development pathways. So we need to tackle these pressures understand and tackle these pressures in order to accelerate implementation. Second uh focus area reducing inequality and advancing justice protecting the biosphere as enabling infrastructure overcoming barriers to integrate deduction accountability and the beyond 2030 again agenda. This is our focus areas. Now the narrative is positive again as it has already been introduced in this work workshop. The STGS represent a science-based humanentric and comprehensive framework for transformation towards sustainable development. A lot has been achieved. 196 countries signed 193 submitted VNRS. uh major transformations of frameworks, policy frameworks has been done already in order to align with the STGS and we have about 20% of implementation across the globe. our major challenge and as we see it in the global sustainable report and as we see it in the SDSN global climate hub and as we see it in uh in my research um uh group and framework euphoria is that while the STGS provide direction and while the STGS do not really face any significant backlash other than what is happening in the US there is no robust structure explicitly tasked with driving their implementation at scale. So one idea and one idea that um we work uh intensively on and it will be part of the global SDR is that we need operational global commons for creating capacity, transparency, accountability and assuring effective fair coordination to deliver STGS on the ground and here three steps to achieve that. The first step is of course continuous measurement, monitoring and assessment and we have a lot of measurement and uh monitoring uh frameworks. uh SDSN is suggesting simplification and probably that is one good way to accelerate implementation implementation that recognizes the complexity the science hectic data hectic nature of SDGs but also enables countries and companies and communities and international frameworks and the multilateral community to e implement easier, faster and uh without major capacity building needs that are immediate. So the first step is measurement and continuous um monitoring. One minute please. Just >> the second step is creating this digital twin that it can be a a digital or not digital twin. In global climate have we have it as digital and is where we create uh system science transformations that are continuously validated and co-designed with stakeholders. And here we have modeling that captures nature, human infrastructure, economy and society. And what we try to do in this integrated modeling is to close the gap between where we are which we measured in step one to where we want to go in an approach that is really systemic. And step three is investment portfolio, public and private finance, equity and accountability that will allow us to finance the pathways that derive from the digital twin. If you want to see the platform, it's an open access platform from SDSN global climate hub that gathers the data, the modeling that integrates stakeholder participation that creates the pathways and importantly these pathways and and I'm sure uh professor Jovanini will refer to this these are beyond GDP pathways. These are pathways that do not only measure flows of productions like we do in GDP but they also measure the accumulation and preservation of comprehensive wealth in terms of produce capital but also human capital, social capital, institutional capital and natural capital and at the end of the day allow us to sustain what support human well-being. So in all this process, equity, fairness, inclusion, capacity building, accountability and transparency is very important. And in the global SDR as well as the SDSN global climate hub, we have each step formulated in a way that can support equity, fairness, inclusion, capacity building, accountability, and transparency. In closing, let me remind that this is an interative process, always stakeholder involving. And finally, in the last 30 seconds, let me uh give you the beyond 2030 recommendations. Protect the foundations of transformation, peace, human rights, and regenerative resilience. Move from goals to integrated pathways. As we talk with the digital global common that I gave you uh before open access open access with capacity the building digital global commons preserve continuity without stagnation avoid 2030 cleage retain the universal and integrated and right page framework institutionalize science-based solution pathways we have so much on this transformation information pathways that is being ignored by the governments at the moment. We need to institutionalize all this work that deres from scientific effort which scientific effort is paid by the taxpayers in the most part of it. We need to institutionalize results, rebuild fiscal space and redirect finance in ways that Professor Sax indicated to make justice and planetary integrity design criteria of the transformation pathways govern frontier technologies in the public interest referring to AI of course and the immense increase in data and digital infrastructures. And la and lastly make accountability trigger correction. Our timeline we are now continuing drafting the report. The report is going on the 4th of September for peer review. The PR review is under the opices of the international science council. Uh in between September and December 2026 we continue regional consultations. January 2027 we give the advanced draft share to the member states and March 2027 we have a final advanced unedited version circulated to member states and finally we uh launch the report of the SG submit in September 27. Thank you very much. >> You thank you very much. This concludes the opening part uh for today's workshop. We had the opening remarks from President Danaka also from Professor uh Jeff Saxs and now from PB. We thought it was important to have also professor Kuri here with us because of course the GSDR process is a very important process. As a reminder in 2015 when the goals were adopted um there was of course in parallel a negotiation for the official indicator framework. There was a system of voluntary national review that was set. Every year countries present their action plans, their progress at the UN and then every four years there was also this idea that there will be a meeting at heads of state level, a summit. Um the next one is happening in 2027 and in the context of that summit a group of scientists is always appointed by the UN secretary general to provide an update about where we are uh standing on this agenda. And so, Professor Konduri here is playing a very important role because she is the co-chair of this group of scientists that will provide an update in 2027 to the UN Secretary General. This is also important as professor Ponturi mentioned because this is the official kickstart for uh the negotiations of the post 2030 agenda. So again, thank you so much to everyone here on site also online for joining us today for this workshop. This is a workshop about the post2030 indicator uh framework which is of course part of the broader landscape of how of implementation mechanisms having uh strong monitoring frameworks around this. Uh we are very grateful to the Japan international cooperation agency um the uh uh or uh research uh institute in particular for being here with us at some university and in particular Dr. here that has done a lot of research on the topic and that was actually the starting point for this project is the research done at JA ORI. Um also we were honored to have President Tanaka a second ago uh with us today. For those that don't know me, I'm G. I'm the vice president of the SDSN also now heading the Asia office uh here. Um the purpose of this two-year collaboration between SDSN and Jika is to collect global insights um on basically the past 10 years uh how um things have worked in terms of indicator frameworks in terms of monitoring system um at the global level at the national level um as well and the idea by taking stock of what has happened is also to come up with recommendations recommendations for the next era of sustainable development. We will do this in different ways. Um so we're going to organize a number of dialogues. Um so this is the kickoff workshop over the next two years. We will organize a number of thematic and regional dialogues also to understand uh specific uh issues and and and areas um including on you know how to harness technologies but also perhaps regional conversations um for specific challenges in in different parts of the world around uh data and and and monitoring. So this is one aspect. We will also conduct a survey. So we will survey um the providers of data but also the users of data to understand what has worked well and what has worked um less well over the past couple of years and identify a way forward as well. Of course at uh Jika OR and also at SDSN there are great research capacities also within this group here of experts and practitioners. So we will also do analytical work and all of this work will feed into a final report which will include recommendations addressed to the UN secretary general. This is drawing upon basically what SDSN has done before the SDGs were adopted where we had a report at SDSN called launching a data revolution which was also already before the adoption of the SGS identify some priorities for the global uh indicator uh framework which was actually behind also the methods and the metrics used in the sustainable development report which we've been uh producing annually at the SCS. Um there are three blocks for today and for this cooperation. The first block is around um data availability understanding the persisting gaps um in data availability and how to better leverage also uh new technologies. This is one block and this will be the first part of the discussion today. The second block which is very important and was highlighted both by president tananka and professor saxs in their opening remarks is how to simplify the indicator framework. There are more than 240 official indicators. Many monitoring instruments use more than 100 indicators. I think for governments this is hard to digest. And so one question is are there ways to simplify the indicator framework which will be the second block of our discussion today. Um and finally the third block is um on strengthening the overall let's say accountability architecture at all levels global continental national and local level including a discussion and we'll have experts uh here with us today that were part of the discussion and in before 2015 about how to build uh the accountability and the moni monitoring frameworks behind the SGS but also people that have been looking at the VNR process for instance and perhaps how to strengthen also So u those processes internationally that aim to um have uh monitoring regular monitoring at the at regular intervals of of the progress that are being done. Um so uh without further ado we will move to the first part of our discussion. Um today we are already behind schedule so I'll need to be strict. I'm sorry uh to all the the speakers but I'll have to be strict in terms of timing. We aim to have a crisp five minutes intervention uh from speakers uh because we also want to leave room for some uh discussion uh here around the table but also with with speakers uh uh online. We have a very rich uh agenda and so we will move um first um we're you know privileged to have um the assistant under secretary uh general for UN DESA the department of economic and social affairs that has shared his thoughts uh via a recorded video. So we'll listen to this and then we will move right away to professor Huadon uh who is director general for international research center of big data uh for SGS. Again this first part of the discussion will aim to focus on uh the global indicator framework uh the data gaps but also how to harness uh new technologies. So first we will show the video and then we will move right away uh to professor Huan for his uh intervention. ladies and gentlemen, colleagues and friends, let me begin by thanking Jaika Oi, SDSN, Dr. Tanaka and Professor Saxs for launching this important partnership. It comes at the right time as we look beyond 2030. The question is not simply how to simplify indicator frameworks. The bigger question is how to ensure they remain scientifically credible, statistically robust and relevant for policym. A decade of SG monitoring offers valuable lessons. We now have enough experience to see what has worked, what has not and what should guide the next generation of global monitoring. I would like to begin with successes. The SVG indicator frame framework is one of the most significant achievements of the global statistical community in decades. What began as an ambitious vision has become a shared global data infrastructure. It provides a common language for measuring sustainable development and a trusted evidence base for policy and accountability. Ladies and gentlemen, the progress is remarkable. The global SCG database has expanded from 115 indicators in 2016 to all 233 indicators today. It now contains more than 3 million data records, 10 times more than a decade ago. Every indicator has an internationally agreed methodology. When the framework was adopted, nearly 40% had none. National statistical systems have also become stronger. Countries have improved coordination across institutions, expanded data sharing, invested in administrative and geospatial data, and increased reporting capacity. Today almost 70% of SG indicators have good country coverage more than double the share 10 years ago. These are indeed major achievements but they also reveal important lessons. Let me share a few with you. First, ambition must be matched by investment. Monitoring more than 230 indicators has stretched national statistical systems. Many indicators remain difficult to measure consistently while financing has not kept pace with the growing demands placed on statistical systems. Second, data gaps persist. coverage is relatively strong for health, water and energy. It remains much weaker for gender equality, sustainable cities, climate action, and peace and justice. Disagregated data also continues to lag, making it harder to identify who is being left behind. Finally, data is still underused. Too often, statistical systems remain disconnected from planning and budgeting processes. Better data does not automatically lead to better policy. These lessons point to a broader conclusion. Building indicative frameworks is not only a statistical exercise. It is also a scientific one. Statistics tell us whether we are making progress. Science helps us determine what should be measured, explains interactions across economic, social, and environmental systems, and identifies emerging risks before they become crises. Ladies and gentlemen, as development challenges become more interconnected, from climate change and biodiversity loss to demographic shifts and technological transformation, we definitely need stronger collaboration between statistitians and the scientific community. From the very beginning, the United Nations already has strong foundations to build on. The 10 member group under the technology facilitation mechanism, the independent group of scientists through the global sustainable development report and the annual STI forum all bring together world-class scientific expertise. Their work should be more closely connected with the global statistical community as we shape monitoring beyond 2030. Ladies and gentlemen, the next generation of indicators should be simpler where possible, but never simpler than the evidence allows. They must remain rigorous, policy relevant and forward-looking. These lessons should inform preparations for the 2027 SG summit and the broader discussion on sustainable development beyond 2030. Let me assure you, DESA stands ready to support member states and stakeholders by bringing together statistics, science, and policy to build a stronger foundation for the future. I look forward to today's discussion and to the ideas this partnership will generate. Thank you again for the opportunity to be with you virtually and wishing you a very successful meeting. Thank you. >> We're very grateful to Mr. Navidid Hanife again, assistant under secretary general at UN DESA for sharing also his perspective. This is the custodian agency of course in charge of the global indicator framework. So we heard some improvements but also persisting uh gaps as well in in the official indicator framework. And in the coming in the next intervention we will hear from speakers um that come from different perspectives but that um can help us understand how alternative data sources and new technologies could help us in the coming years also bridge and fill um some of the data gaps. We'll start first from Professor uh Huadon Guo on big data for SDGs joining us from from China online. We'll then move to Dr. Simona Marinescu, chief executive officer of the International Data Center Authority who hopefully can also share her perspective specifically on the challenges faced by small islands developing states. Those are among the countries that face the most significant data gaps uh in terms of availability of STG indicators. We'll then move to Dr. Takahiro Usuka um from senior research fellow from the the Japan International Cooperation Agency ORI specifically on citizen generated data opportunities and then we'll move also to a very important topic uh and we'll hear from Prof. Aronima Malik from Sydney University, someone we've been working uh extensively with over the past couple of years, specifically on the issue of tracking not only the indicators that matter for domestic SDG implementation, but also making sure we have indicators that also track those negative impacts that might be generated abroad, the so-called international spillover uh effects by implementing the SGS. Countries can also outsource negative impacts abroad including deforestation or CO2 emissions and Prof. Madik has been at the forefront of a lot of work on this issue notably using input output uh tables uh and extended so-called mio tables. So first we're moving to professor Juan Guo director general of the international research center of big data for for SG from China. Professor the floor is yours. And again uh I'll be grateful if we can have five minutes intervention. So that for each block we can also have uh can also open the floor for for comments and questioning. Professor over. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh good afternoon, good morning, good evening ladies and gentlemen. I want to use the PBT talk something about the data challenge and the big data solutions. Actually should say something about from data gaps to actionable evidence for the post 2030 agenda. Uh really my main message is simple. Uh they say the big data can move us from incomplete and delay reporting toward more timely especially acade and actionable evidence for the post you know 2030 agenda. I will make four points. The main data challenge the capability offered by big data. how uh you know credible evidence can be generated and what these lessons may imply for the post 2030 indicator framework. uh you know despite the important progress four challenges remain. Many cers still lack consistent and comparable data especially in data provisions. Reporting is often too uh infrequent and to capture rapid change and shock. National average can hide major differences among cities, communities, bases and vulnerable groups. Statistical automation and groundbased data also remain fragmented. As a result, we may know that the progress is slow but not always where the gaps are, who is affected or why progress is fing behind. Officials strategically remain the foundation of SG monitoring. They provide authority, centralized definitions and national ownership. Big data should therefore completement not replace official strategy. This role is to obtain coverage increase update frequency provide the finest special detail and offer additional validation. The strongest system is one in which official static statistic and the new data source reinforce each other. So big data offers four capabilities we can say uh it can broad coverage to remote cross border and data pro areas increase monitoring frequency from annual to seasonal monthly or near realtime observation reveal differences at the level of cities basins gra and hospitals and connect environmental change with homeman activity by combining earth oblation special data, statistics and social economic data, AI and models. Big data is not simply more data. It enable more continuous specially and integrated monitoring. However, data value alone doesn't create the credible evidence. We need the transable chain from the observation to decision. Direct observations must first be harized and quality control. They can then be transformed into verable indicators and evidence about the trend cabs, hotspots and drivers. Only then can they effectively support policy and resource allocation across the chain. Common standards, transparency, validation and transibility and uncertainty assessment are essential. This requires a complete monitoring system, not a single database or model. It show the integrate multi data sources use AI to extract key information in cylinders and interoperability validate results and uh uh quantify uncertainty and deliver open and reusable data products models tools and services. The solution is therefore a full chain of data algorithm standards validation and service. So I'm from sears at sears we are developing this approach through big earth data for the we combine satizations in c networks open data models and analytics. This support global and national monitoring especially act [clears throat] indicator products and shift from SL assessment toward diagnosis scenario analysis and disillion support. Our goal is to make invisible gaps visible and turn global goals into location specific evidence. Since the 2019 SEAR had already published any report series on big data, big earth data in support of SGS. The series had prouced the more than 20 data products, more than 100 methodologies and 165 recommendations. This outposts car food, water, cities, climate risk and ecosystem showing how digital evidence can support both global assessment and practical diseases. The evidence also show how far we deal to go among the 18 SG indicators like you know the gentleman mentioned about that with the highest vual you know heterogenity set in the global report only one was on track for 2030. This is not only a warning. It also shows the value of a timely especially act break and monitoring. It can identify both weather progress in the off track and where priority action is needed. So uh let me conclude with three implementations implications. The first the post 2030 framework has a fed on concise set of globally comparable and policy relevant core indicators. Second these indicators should be supported by a trustworthy digital monitoring and evidence system. Third countries should have room to adopt the indicator to national priorities while maintaining clear link to the global core. This is the initial concept, but it may help balance global comparability with national relevance. The post 2030 agenda doesn't simply need more indicators. It needs better data, strong digital evidence and more actionable monitoring. So based on that we circ just um last year launched the program we called the digital sustainment development go program in short is the DSP. So the GSP is designed to help build this capability what I mentioned about it aims to stress the official IG indicator framework through digital evidence especially for data pro and priority areas. BSP will provide a open platform for the global core development of data models demonstrators cap capacity and digital public goods. We welcome international partner to build this capacity capability together. So thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much uh professor Bo very important messages on the use of uh of big data. Um and we will now move to and again we will take comments and questions at the end of each um session. We'll now move to uh Dr. Simona Marinescu. Um Simona, it would be great if you could speak. Of course, you're the former UN resident coordinator for Samoa Kok Highlands UN Tokawo. Um, you are currently working at the at the IDCA. So, if you could combine both the technology aspect, but if also if you could say a word, Simona, specifically about the small islands developing states. We know there are major challenges there. Perhaps it's the group of countries with the biggest data challenges. So, uh, please Simona, if you could try to cover in five about five minutes uh provide some key messages uh on both fronts. Thank you. >> Thank you so very much uh Dr. Lafertun. Um excellencies, distinguished co-panelists, is a great honor for the International Data Center Authority Global Foundation to join you in this first workshop on the monitoring framework of the post2030 agenda. I would like to first thank um SDSN Guom if you allow me for having granted so much consideration to small island developing states throughout the implementation of the SDGs. We've worked together and produced some new metrics for small island uh developing states and then they were universalized. I'm referring to the multi-dimensional vulnerability index that without SDSN we wouldn't have had is now adopted by the general assembly uh again as a universal metric and if I were to make one first recommendation here starting with the end would be to say uh GOM and and distinguished uh academics partners of SDSN um uh to include the multi-dimensional vulnerability index into the next framework monitoring framework of the boss 2030 agenda is a complex metric that uh helps countries um define and measure their level of permanent vulnerability. Let me um then go very quickly into a few um slides that I want to share. I'll be as fast as possible. small island developing states have from the very beginning struggled significantly to be able to report consistency consistently and robustly against the SDGs and also very importantly uh Guiam is that it took quite a few years to the world to be able to um internalize the SDG framework as sound as the SDGs are as as important as they are to have the capa the capacity to report against in a manner that is meaningful. countries have had to uh invest significantly and they still struggle to this day to be able to provide data that is strongly uh reliable. And um uh just very briefly in one of the voluntary national review uh reporting sessions at the high level political forum uh a member state of OECD made a comment that the reporting on the SDGs the VNRS look very much like a selfie because the uh reliability the the strength the robustness again of the data have been questionable uh throughout. So referring to small island developing states 57 across three regions out of which 37 are members of the uh United Nations 20% of the membership of the United Nations. one common challenge the statistical capacity they rank today below Latin America below the subsahar and Africa believe it or not uh they have a very low uh statistical performance index and uh they from the very beginning into the reporting uh domesticating the SDG indicators and reporting they were only available to provide data strong valuable data against 60% of the SDG G's that has not changed again far below other regions of the world and most importantly on indicators that show how collectively how together we implement the SDGs uh data was only available for about 33 uh% of those indicators. One point that I wanted to bring here is that uh seeds now have a 10-year agenda that will go beyond 2030 is the Antigga and Barbuda agenda for SIDS Abbas uh in short uh that was adopted in 2024 in Antigga and Barbuda and that has a a framework a monetary framework of um itself. It would be great if such an agenda such a framework would have some continuity in the post 2030 agenda to allow those countries to have strong um data system. I would like to say very briefly here that it was interesting to see at the HLPF recently that the secretary general made very explicit the correlation between the state of digital infrastructure starting with connectivity but not only that and the uh statistical capacity and fiscal space that countries have today data is considered an asset class but most importantly data and AI capability are factors of production. Guom, we had this conversation. Nothing in the economy will be produced without a certain level of reliance on data with that. Um I think it's extremely important that we see that in the post2030 agenda when the uh very interestingly when the um uh Abbas was adopted on the digital readiness um index the secretariat of the agenda had to reach out to ITU the international telecommunications union which is the only organization in the United Nations that was thought to have some clarity on what digital readiness Means digital readiness is not only about telecommunications and again without strong digital uh infrastructure countries will not be able to have uh valuable data high quality data without which growth in the intelligence age is al almost impossible to consider. In the dig digital readiness index that the international data center authority produces seats um are scattered across a wide range of in of uh of numbers of scores from Singapore at 62% to Haiti at at sorry 62 points at height at 23 out of 100 that's how this is being computed maybe just very important to say here that neither income for instance Guyana is a high mid-inccome country and and um nor scale like se shells which is a very small island state uh are predicting readiness as you could see seals does much better than Guyana. So those are points of reflection for us moving forward. Let me um anchor this topic within the digital infrastructure. To have high quality data, sovereign data, robust data in the intelligence age, countries need to start at the bottom. They need to have proper digital infrastructure which is unfortunately not what is happening today. I just wanted to show that while the three regions of seeds do have connectivity through submarine cables, they practically extract no value on their islands from being such a contributor to global connectivity. There is no internet exchange point on any of the islands around the world. We've just returned from the Bahamas. The Bahamas is the first the Commonwealth of the Bahamas the first in the Caribbean to have a more strategic approach to that. So in traffic in the Caribbean among countries and again data needs to have that level of connectivity needs to be routed through uh Miami where there is an internet uh exchange point. The same is happening in um ACE and in the Pacific. uh the Pacific uh also depends on the internet exchange points that exist in Australia and larger countries the United States. So the investment in the submarine cable has not generated any particular significant returns for uh small island developing states. They all continue to struggle with data because again they do not have data infrastructure to allow them to collect systematically and report and also have flexibility to generate new data sets based on what the indicators are going to say. So all seeds are important because they are lending points of uh the digital of the connectivity across the ocean. Those cables need to land somewhere. However, the landing point has not generated a digital economy because there is no digital infrastructure. Dig when I'm referring to digital infrastructure, I'm speaking about the full spectrum starting with obviously data centers to power cloud infrastructure um AI infrastructure. Countries would need to have tailored to their needs um such uh such uh digital infrastructure to be able to perform. So um it's critical then as these lending points generate revenues, public revenues and generate uh development and economic um uh outcomes uh that that we all hope to see. Seeds continue to have lower growth rates and also uh significant fragility as climate change aggressively advances. So it's it's practically pricing uh the connectivity making sure that uh there is host value returned retained on the islands digit basic digital infrastructure on seeds would allow them to uh store data to produce data services and to benefit their own economies. Imagine how important um would be for them to have national regional uh Jeff spoke about the importance of regional systems of internet exchange points for uh small island developing states to be able to better predict climate related um events and and uh disasters. Those are aspects that would need to be considered in the next um um agenda and then ultimately into the um in into the monitoring framework that we would like to have. So I just want to say that um I it's to have the uh data systems in place. We have started to work the international data center authority is a global operator in digital infrastructure and compute capacity helping countries to generate that particular strength that will be valuable as we move forward. Um and um I just want to add to that that we would like to put on the table indices that we have produced. I spoke about the digital readiness index that cuts again across um the economy, the environment and and the social um pictures uh that the country has. Uh we also produced an index that looks into how dependent uh the economy, how dependent roles into governments, businesses, multilateral organizations are on human uh capacity and human intelligence. We are still at the point where human and artificial intelligence can coexist. We just need to ensure that humans are ready to be able to use artificial intelligence not to be replaced by it and improve productivity and again um uh economic gains. And we work uh to on that particular aspect capacitating workforce for countries to be able to uh make use of uh digital infrastructure and uh again secure incomes into the digital age. I will just u mention two more things and I'll close uh gu. So when we talk about data capacity in 2026 and post 20 towards 2030 and post 2030, we need to also address aspects of sovereignty, aspects of national security and they start with the type of digital infrastructure that the countries have. countries need to have um uh in their ownership or co-ownership such digital infrastructure. They need to own their data. If governments sit in the cloud of large hyperscalers and major techs in the United States and other parts of the world, how much ownership they have on their data, how much sovereignty they actually have and then um extremely important is to have their skills uh in place. Um this takes time. So we would like to make an invitation to SDSN to uh look into those aspects. Is the workforce prepared for this particular technology transformation that we um witness and to generate data as an asset class as a factor of production to help countries move uh uh forward. So measuring digital readiness as a baseline for the next framework and connectivity is just one step. So there is much more uh beyond that and then um ensure that UN agencies that are going to be the custodians of this new agenda, the support entities to member states uh have clarity and response on responsibilities on supporting uh digital uh growth digital development and um building on the data that exists is critical. I'll just close with that. So this is my last slide. I would like to speak very briefly about uh recommendations. So first of all, we all know that the quality of the monitoring framework depends on the actual measurability of of the agenda and that starts with the quality of its theory of change. So we had a great step up from the MDGs to the SDGs in the 2030 agenda with a much thorougher uh theory of change that needs to continue and we would like to uh put forward some ideas as to how digital economies are going to be the new model of growth and what exactly we are going to measure to help countries understand when they when they stand. Please consider using indicators that exist into the Antigga and Barbuda agenda for seeds. Um seeds have already started building those data sets and it would be uh very interesting to see in 2028 what they are going to report against the framework that they adopted uh last year and do include the multi-dimensional vulnerability index in what you take forward. But let me also say that LDC's have a framework under the DOHA program of action. Look into that and see what needs to be taken forward into the next agenda. So have the LLDC's. So do they um as they have their own agenda for 20 uh 205 2035. There is a seed center of excellence that is hosted by Antigga and Barbuda and it has a global data hub that is meant to help countries build that data capacity. Again, data capacity starts with physical structures or co- uh owned physical structures for seeds. But um this is an entity that needs to be acknowledged that needs to be partnered with moving forward. And again the correlations between digital development and uh development in general um development progress would need to be acknowledged in the next agenda. We stand ready to put forward those metrics again the digital readiness index um that we report against on an annual basis and the human dependency index critically important. We need to make a call on our humanity to reflect on our pathways moving forward for humans to remain relevant, to be safe into the intelligence age, to enjoy life and to also um reaping the benefits of the intelligence, artificial intelligence. Celebrate the artificial intelligence as as we uh we made it possible. uh humans made possible this incredible progress. So uh to conclude, seeds are behind on all fronts. Um and again uh SDG data availability still remains uh behind statistical capacity and and uh data availability SDG data availability behind the rest of the world. We need to close the infrastructure gap working together for seeds to be able to have lifesaving data. Thank you so much >> very much. with the point made by Jeb in his opening remark around how to harness AI and digital as perhaps you know an extra an extra goal or series of of target in the next framework as well um I just want to highlight that because we are here in in in in the room but the online we have about 50 also experts and practitioners connected the meeting is being recorded we'll also prepare a summary of that of that meeting uh after the after the event. Let me now move to Dr. Osuka uh specifically on citizen generated data uh opportunities in the indicator framework for STGS and over to you. >> Good afternoon. My name is Takahuch. I would like to discuss how science generic data can contribute indicator framework and future system. So next please STD monitoring has made significant progress in the past decades. However, major challenge is many indicators still suffer from the data gaps taste and lack of aggregated. So at the same time statistical system face increasing resource constraint. So recent studies therefore suggest that science is essential rather than option optional statistics. X what can student data contribute? I would highlight three characteristics. It's fast and you can see green color. It is local. It capture last mile information that is often invisible to national. Second, it is inclusive. It helps bring the voices of marginalized and underrepresented population into monetary systems. Third, it is context rich. It captures life experience risks and functionality. This sense data can bring a human security perspective to the development point. Next, please. Yes. So of course student generated data should not be viewed in acceleration. The future rise in integration is yes satellite data provide coverage data provides speed generate data provide context and participation. So our key challenge is how to reduce bias and make effective use of subjective informations. classifying data source and integrating multiple buildings. We start with an example from biodiversity monitor Japan smartphone based platforms such as biome are enabling citiz contribute to the biodiversity observation on the large scale. You can see the photo found on the geographical data of Japan. So this color shows that over 50,000 of species and 11 millions of data of the occurren datab so that data through the gamification the company encourage participation and generate large volume biodiversity data. This data is insufficient to understand complex reality of biodiversity. However, this biodiversity data set their potential is becoming increasingly next please. So when system observation are combined with uh remote sensing and environmental DNA or other uh as a tool for the biodiversity modeling so they can generate more comprehensive biodiversity indicators with improved coverage reliability and resolutions. So the key essence is straightforward. No single data sources is sufficient. Where do you come from integrating multiple data streaming to better understand environmental conditions? Next, please. Second example is water quality monitoring systems. Such hybrid indicator improve validation and expand monitoring coverage. Importantly uh they also demonstrate how generate data can dial statics rather than complete. So you can see the uh the figure here it showing the river passes. So this is a data from the Zambia two countries. Zambia has already combined with data with the national agency data sage indicator six three to reporting it's focusing the water. So data can streng indicators. Next example come from the rural water access. Traditional indicator of focus on the existing of the infrastructure but infrastructure does not necessarily mean access. Uh you can see the photo. Uh this is the uh the well from the groundwater. So it's showing that the rural exist and the bra may exist and the handb may exist but may not be function. Next, please. Thank you. action and strengthen humanities. The future of mon sustainable development reality about helping people better lives. >> Thank you. Thank you very much Dr. uh so we'll move to the last intervention for this uh session. So if there are specific comments and questions because we're behind schedule, we'll probably take just one or two and then we'll move to the next uh session. But we'll move now to professor Malik who has done extensive work specifically on transpoundary effects and measuring those so-cal spill over effects in the context of the SGS. Uh Aunima uh before of course let's try to stick to about five minutes and then we'll try to take uh one or two comments and questions before moving to the next session on simplifying the indicator framework. Over to you Adonima. Thank you Guim uh and thank you for inviting me to present today about measuring externalities and uh spillover effects. Um as Gu mentioned we have uh at the University of Sydney in collaboration with the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network uh worked on a number of case studies uh assessing the effects of international trade on measurements related to SG SDGs. So I'll I'll start off by setting up the scene about why we really need to look into measuring spillovers and crossborder effects and these these are largely because supply chains are complex and these pictures that I have put on my slide are taken from multiple research articles that we have published uh in um journals to do with nitrogen emissions embodied in international trade uh carbon emissions embodied in international trade income related effects employment related and other social effects um from production and consumption systems and of course we live in an interconnected world which was highlighted in the keynote as well and we are all part of an interconnected system as are all the countries. So there are these hidden spillover effects which are embodied in supply chains uh which need to be accounted for. So the current uh 2030 agenda for sustainable development really only considers material footprint as an explicit indicator. So many of the consumption based metrics are not mentioned in the current uh agenda. So we in as I mentioned in collaboration with UNDSN Gu kindly and others as well have used a range of um methodologies including input output based assessments supply chain methodologies for measuring these crossber spillovers for a range of sectors. So looking at textile supply chains, food supply chains, um how trade is working for people and planet and what are the spillover effects in EU's supply chains related to food, textiles and critical minerals as well. Just briefly on the methodologies that we use for the for doing such uh assessments. We start off by looking at consumer demand and of course um the immediate suppliers that supply to that consumer which could be a country, could be a region. So of course these assessments can be done at regional level, at national level and also at global level to measure spillover effects across regions, spillover effects across countries and across sectors. And starting with the consumer uh could be also be an industry or a business. We look at the immediate supplier, suppliers of suppliers and so on. We have a database that we developed at the University of Sydney which captures detail for more than 160 countries uh 120 sectors and using that database we have done a range of assessments uh looking at spillovers. This is a heat map uh of uh that database that we use which is a multi-reional input output table and the applications that we have been doing at the University of Sydney are around modeling how international trade impacts SG progress. what are the sustainability impacts of new technologies that are coming up. So of course we need to assess before we scale um when when it comes to technologies because there are of course hidden indirect impact impacts of of new technologies new innovations and those need to be assessed from a supply chain perspective um and crossber perspective. So impacts of policy changes as well. So if we have uh these spillovers which are crossber uh effects uh a country can negatively or positively impact other countries in uh in sort of uh achieving uh SGS. So these cross crosswater impacts do need attention when it comes to post uh agenda 2030 and of course business level assessments and benchmarking and supply chain assessments. A paper that I will talk about which we published uh in uh nature sustainability included us selecting a range of STGS and constructing metrics consumptionbased metrics linked to those STGS. So in this study we looked at 12 explicit STGS uh and 12 explicit consumptionbased metrics that we tried to link to STGS. As I mentioned previously, we these consumption based metrics are largely absent uh from the current um agenda. So of course we came up with indicators and we called these proxies, consumptionbased proxies which we then used for assessing how countries are performing in terms of polarizing impacts where a country is negatively impacting its trading partners in progress towards SGS or equalizing impacts where we do see some positive effects from international trade. So largely our findings showed that we are in a world which is experiencing polarizing impacts for a range of STGS when looked from a consumption-based uh perspective because there are hidden crossber effects. There are hidden externalities which are not being accounted for. Um and these are largely to do with environmental indicators. Of course we can drill deeper. uh we can also look at what specific countries are doing in terms of their interactions with their trading partners and how that's impacting in ter in a range of environmental, social and economic indicators. So not just emissions, we're talking about biodiversity, we're talking about land, water, um social effects in terms of fatal and non-fatal accidents in terms of employment generation or income generation. So a huge facet of indicators spanning the environmental, social and economic uh sphere to understand how countries over time have progressed uh when it came to agenda 2030 and of course how they're interacting uh over uh over a range of indicators. So if I just you know hone in on one indicator which is climate action uh or SG which is climate action and the specific indicator that we linked up with climate action we saw that we can spread out these countries and these are just dots that you see on this slide. Um and these dots are spread out across four quadrants. So countries are either net importing or net exporting. So over time you can have a country which is uh import trending or a country which is export trending and it really depends on their production and consumption systems and what they're uh importing from the rest of the world and whether their production based impacts are higher or their consumption based impacts are higher. So typically countries that feature in this quadrant which are net exporting and export trending their production based impacts are higher than their consumption based impacts. So P refers to production based and C to consumption based. And if we look at this quadrant which features countries which are largely net importing and import trending uh I've taken the country labels out but just for illustration largely countries in this quad quadrant typically have uh their consumption based impacts which are larger than their production based impact. So if we just look at production based impacts we miss this entire picture of externalities and crossber effects of international trade and globalization and our consumption and our demand for goods and services. It's also important to look at country specific impacts and the regional coverage is important uh in terms of if we hone in on one region how is that impacting other countries around the world world for a range of indicators whether it be emissions or its land use or biodiversity threats and regional coverage also sectoral coverage. So of course for sectoral coverage it's not just the direct impacts that we need to consider. We need to consider the entire supply chain of impacts because as I showed in one of my slides with the supply chain tree starting with the consumer at the bottom we have direct impacts and direct demand for goods and services but it's only being met if you have these indirect sectors and indirect regions uh all playing their role in the upstream supply chain. So, MRIO assessments are able to unravel and for a range of indicators and help us in assessing these impacts and how it's sort of um uh panning out when it comes to agenda 2030 and and conversations uh post agenda 2030. So, just to conclude, I'll just say as we look beyond the um 2030 agenda, we need to really ensure that it's critical we include these u metrics, these um indicators that can account for these spillover effects. uh because that's largely u uh a gap that we have observed as part of the research that we have been doing in consumption based uh accounting. Uh strong data foundation is a must uh which was also mentioned in the keynote uh for supporting these frameworks uh for monitoring progress and also coming up with these indicators for post um 2030 and the new frameworks that we are now looking towards. I'll just end by saying that we have at the University of Sydney developed the sustainable business hub. We have over 80 uh academics working in sustainability and we are doing engaged research uh with partners such as UNDS and other and others uh in contributing to the achievement of 2030 and and um uh coming up with models and practices that businesses can adopt uh in uh supporting this agenda and beyond. And I'll stop here. Thanks G. your price for your work on this last year for your paper specifically linking the spillovers and the uh and the and the STGS. Um so uh that was the last uh intervention for this part of the discussion which was again specifically on the global indicator framework both the persisting data uh challenges the priorities for improving uh data uh availability but also hard to harness uh technologies and new methods as well. Let me pause here look around the room here but also online if there's any uh comments questions for our speakers uh for this session and afterwards we will move to the next session which is around simplifying the indicator framework but specifically on the issue of strengthening data availability and also how to harness alternative uh data sources and technologies. Any questions comments? I see Kier online. Do we have comments questions? At this stage we have two in the room here. Okay. So let me please make me assign if online there's a hand that's being raised but uh perhaps uh may and then call >> correct. Yeah. Thank you. Uh this is a question for Dr. Malik. Um okay. Can you hear me fine? >> Speak louder. Thank you. >> Yeah. Uh this is a question for Dr. Malik. Um so my my question would be what would what would your um uh idea be for moving on to to be able to consider spillover effects within the next framework or the adapted framework since they since this work requires so much data mas are so uh hard to deal with and and then we are trying to also simplify uh do you think uh is there a We could have different indicators that would capture this as proxies or is your kind of research where you you you you try to process the existing indicators um enough to just capture the the spillover effect. >> Let's let's think around and then we'll ask our our speakers to answer. So go ahead. Yeah. >> Thank you so much. My question or my comment is not so much about this size session but the one that was before at the opening. It links back to what was said yesterday about not adding more goals but maybe thinking more about breaking silos and thinking about complimentarity between the existing ones. So on this aspect of harnessing technology in general and AI in particular, might there be also worth thinking about adding it as a crosscutting enabler rather than adding yet another goal as it was also mentioned and to really think systematically how can it be hardened as a catalyst for the existing ambitions and maybe as an accelerator. Do we have any questions online? Otherwise, I think there was one specific question to you uh Arunima and then on the AI issue, of course, you know, we have Simula still with us. I see your hand. I was sure that Simona would would like to react to this to this question. So, and and other speakers as well, please feel free to react to the two questions from the from the floor. Uh perhaps Aunima first and then on the second question from Carelia, perhaps Simona, you can jump in. Um yeah thank you thank you for your question. Um so our research uh has shown that there are uh in addition to material footprint which is explicitly mentioned uh in the current STG framework other indicators uh which can be in a harmonized manner assessed um all under one MRI framework. There are of course indicators which are very well developed um with colleagues uh in AC across Sydney and also broadly in uh in other institutions around the world working on uh a range of environmental indicators for example emissions, carbon footprint uh uh is pretty well developed and so are some of the um other indicators on land uh and water uh and there are now open access MRI databases which exist which can be used uh for assessing this crosswater water spillover uh effects. So my vision uh for a post 2030 agenda is to expand uh the footprint suit rather than just mentioning material footprint which is already there uh mention other indicators which are developed uh and backed by by research and are used by international organizations already uh and incorporating those uh supported by MRI frameworks which are also pretty well developed. We should be able to incorporate cross virus spillovers in assessments. >> Would you agree that since 2015 you've seen a massive improvement in the quality and the timeliness of the data on these issues of spillovers which would would make them sort of illegible for being part of sort of an official indicator framework at the global level. Would you agree with this? >> Um I would agree with this. Sorry I'm losing my voice for some reason. Um um I fully agree with this. Um so about 20 years ago we only had um single region input output tables. Uh but now we have multi-reion input output tables. Um and they're pretty as I as I said updated on a regular basis. They're open access. Um and there are groups who are actively working on on um supporting um progress and development of these these tables. We have research that uh has been around for more than 20 years. So um I would agree. I'm losing my voice for some reason, but I think >> Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll let you take a break. Thank you. Perhaps Simona, over to you. >> Thank you so much. I also want to commend Professor Malik for the um presentation for the quality of the u topic that she referred to of the work behind the topic she referred to. And I would suggest that the uh reporting on spillovers be included into what countries report. Not changing at this point in time anything in the indicator framework but just asking them and helping them to start factoring that into the reporting the VNR reporting uh additional reporting to the UN. uh on the question on the artificial intelligence what we so first of all today technology innovation and technology is one of the means of implementation under SDG7 what countries report cannot be aggregated is all over the place obviously every country has made some progress in use of technology some established innovation labs in the government they are working uh across sectors government businesses academia on innovation but there is nothing to link the innovation and technology to everything else that is being reported against the 17 SDGs. So that obviously show that in 2015 we did not anticipate the technological progress that the world has made to date. So what I think would make sense at this point in time if we want to create a bridge between this framework and the next framework is to add the digital a digital readiness index because that would look across the economy where exactly the internet access the speed the uh uh digital infrastructure footprint uh correlates with income levels and and economic growth. And then an environment score where we look into energy stats, the composition of energy, the emissions and then the uh social governance score that looks into human development, uh transparency, perception of transpar of corruption, uh democracy and transparency, all those aspects as a distinct indicator as an SDG SDG-18 um as as Professor Saxs referred to to help ensure that we have baselines in 2030 when we move to a new the new agenda but definitely the use of AI across the SDGs would be important to be an indicator or component of a sub indicator component of the indicators underneath. It's not impossible. We should be able to do it. we will have clarity as to what to what extent countries actually understand and are capable of accessing using producing their own uh eventually to uh support progress against the SDGs. So a component an indicator component under each SDG on the use of artificial intelligence and a distinct indicator on digital readiness would be perfect to ensure that in 2030 we are ready for a new growth model that will have digital means digital tools digital capabilities compute capacity at the center. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much Simona. And uh I think with this we'll close this first uh session. And also Simona, I know it's the middle of the night for you in DC. So thank you for for joining us. Um and so I see we have >> Yeah, but we'll we'll we'll we'll pause here and maybe we'll go back to or are there pressing comments, questions? Okay. Well, >> what is this? This the he posted it in the chat. Okay. >> I don't know if Go wants to respond or >> Okay. Does professor go is professor go still online with us? Okay, we'll take a final final comment from professor Guo I mean we have it in writing so in any case we'll summarize this. Okay, we'll close the session now and we'll move to the simplifying indicator framework. Thank you very much to all our speakers to this uh to this session and professor go we have your notes here so there will be a summary and so all of this will be of course incorporated also in the in the summary but thank you very much to all of our speakers and we'll move now to the second part of the workshop today which is on the issue which was mentioned also in the opening remarks as well the issue of simplifying uh the indicator uh the identificator framework this has been at the heart of course of the research of Dr. Sato here at the JA Oata Research Institute. Um the idea being that of course we have a global indicator framework with more than 200 indicators which is very hard to digest for governments and as we're thinking about the priorities for implementation in the next phase. The idea is to think in this group collectively are there ways to make the indicator framework more operational at the global level but also at the national level. So we'll hear now from uh a number of initiatives that have been going on that have tried to identify perhaps some core or headlined sets of indicators and we'll start first with uh professor Enrico Jovanini um who uh was part of the UN high level expert group on beyond uh GDP. Uh this is a group that just released a very important report with a set of headline uh indicators to go beyond GDP. And so we will hear now from professor Joe Banini. The floor is yours, professor. >> Is Professor Joani with us or he is in the call? >> Okay. So, we cannot hear for now, Professor Joe Banini. So, perhaps we'll we'll move uh right away to you. I mean, you are in the room Pra. So, I guess in the room we will hear you. So perhaps we'll move to Praal and then we'll come back to professor Jovanini uh afterwards as as the next uh speaker. Praal uh you are uh leading important work on BSDGs including a major initiative on the post 2030 uh on the post 2030 uh framework at the university of coning. Um so over to you uh >> thank you. Yeah. Hello everybody. Uh good morning, good afternoon, good evening depending of your time zone. Yeah. So let me spend a few minutes on on this topic. Now basically uh talking about like I would not call it like identifying core indicator set because because what we need to do is like not focus much about the indicator but but more like a system as a whole. Yeah. In that context uh what we can do is uh we can we can look at yeah okay in this context what we do in our group is like we use this three-fold scientific approach. Now basically what we do in our group is uh we look at uh things from more holistic perspective. Now looking at quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and knowledge score and uh in in in before we heard about let's say identifying a core set of indicator for me it's not about identifying a core set of indicator. It's more about prioritizing the set of STGS depending upon the context because if we start the box again and say that oh we need to talk about the core set of indicator then we are spending a lot of time and effort on negotiating those core set of indicators. What we need is that these when we look at this 165 169 target 17 goals we find synergies and trade-off among these goals. they are interacting in a positive or a negative way. In that context, what we need to do is like we need to prioritize STGS based on context specific need. We have to identify STGS which has more synergies. Yeah. Or more target and then find a strategy to maximize the synergies and minimize minimize the the minimize the the the tradeoffs. And and on the other hand, these STGS are politically negotiated targets. So what does that mean is if we even meet all the STGS, are we be in the sustainable world? I don't know. Yeah. And we have to also think about this broader picture of interlinkaging to understand the interlinkage between sustainable development and or sustainable development goal and the sustainability as a concept like effect of achieving and under achieving STGS in in a broader picture of sustainability. And here when I talk about sustainability I'm talking about building societal foundation for everyone within the the ecosystem or within the ecological city and then definitely for next few years we need to think more more and more on science based uh science based post 2020 agenda in this context uh what we do is uh we use uh we use this quantitative analysis now mainly to understand synergies and trade-off among different STGS. I would not go too much deep detail on this but but what I would like to highlight is uh one aspect here. We we talk about data, right? And and we talk about data. We talk about different data sources. Now, and this is the exercise we do now. We look at data that is coming from United Nation, the official SDC framework. We look at the data that is provided by G Bank that is the uh the world development indicator. We look at the data provided by SDSN from the sustainable development group and and this is the picture here and and we try to combine this tree data set and then and then try to come up with uh that's let's say uh like a unified STC database and we can see that there are still gaps whichever data we are using we see a lot of gaps over there like like STG5 which is uh gender equality SG1 which is about cities and communities and SG 14 which is about uh life underwater. This is 16 which is about uh peace, justice and instit institutions. And we what we can see in this data is like still there is a lot of data gap for particular STG STGS and and we can see similar picture on STG target which I I'm not presenting here and and this is not only about the data gap uh what we can also see is like if you look at the let's say uh the time series providability of the data to to say something concrete about whether we are making progress on STGS or not. We see that in many countries uh we don't get more than 50% of this data and and the question is like we need to close this data gap without this data gap we without closing this data gap we will we will not be able to understand what are synergies which are trade-off and understanding these synergies and trade-offs are really crucial thing to prioritize the SGS which are the core core goals and targets we need to we need to implement now and in that context uh what we did is that we did a a a literature review where we tried to understand what does a human well-being means. And basically our ultimate goal is to be happy to be to be in a world where we everybody has a societal wellbeing. And we try to understand what does this societal well-being means. Uh from the literature and what we see that in in literature we can find that more than 700 indicators that has been used to define societal foundation or societal which can be grouped into five themes and 21 21 dimension. And this is the point when I'm talking about like whether achieving STGS we will be in the sub in a sustainable world or not. So we have to reflect on this here. Now for example like a subjective wellbeing issue about issue about let's say mindfulness awareness is not there in STS because without being aware without being mindful mindful can we be in the sustainable world? I don't think so. And and we have to think a bit more also in in in in that aspect when whenever we are talking about post 2020. And what we do also is like we supplement this sort of quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis because whenever we are talking about development issue there is a tons of literature before STGS in terms of development in terms of sustainable development. And what we try to do here is that we try to look at those literature and try to understand the reason behind why there are synergies, why there are trade-offs. In that context, uh here are some examples. One example is coming from urban agriculture and try to understand why urban agriculture matter for sustainable development and what are the reason where where where this might be also create some problem there. I don't I don't go a bit more deep here in this topic. Now uh I would like to highlight another story here when we talk about this IPCC because uh what we also did is like we look at the IPCC report and try to look at how IPCC report reflect on STGS now mainly the report coming from AR5 and AR6 and one of the key finding here we see that is IPCC report is not reflecting all the STGS well now there are certain STGS that is reflected more but not all the STGS Now and and in AR7 report what we are calling is that IPCC need to report better the sustainable development goals because we want to solve the climate issue or biodiversity issue maybe for the sustainable development or uh to uh mainly for the sustainable development. Now and and this is another approach looking at the literature looking at the uh policy document to understand the mechanism behind those STG interactions. Now the third approach is knowledge cooperation. What we try to do is like we try to cooperate the knowledge among the among the stakeholders now and try to uh do a workshop like this now and this is one of the workshop where you are there. I don't know whether I can see you in the picture or not. Yeah. So so where we try to understand what we need to do uh for accelerating STS. And this is the insight from our workshop uh last year where we talk about this four stakeholder interplay uh for accelerating STGS and by 2030 and beyond. Now so so I will not go too much in detail but but here we talk about actionable insight and solution. We talked about reinforcing multistakeholder partnership uh promoting integrated sustainability assessment and and and and that and with one of the most important point is to account for differentiated needs and realities of the people. So so this sort of stakeholder analy uh this sort of knowledge co-creation process is ongoing. This is one of them now and and the and the other one that we are doing would be next year. Yeah, this is uh the next year we are in in April the 5 to 10th of April we are doing a growing sustainability conference as a as a as a as a as a exercise to provide the input for the uh final SDG summit in 2027. Yeah. where we are talking about some excellent points uh coming out of this work conference for that for that for that uh SDC final summit and I would like to invite all of you for more discussion in depth on this conference so I will stop here thank you >> yeah thank you pra and indeed if we can link this initiative also with your conference somehow that would be wonderful because there's many things going on on the post 2030 uh framework and so if we can connect to that would be wonderful let me turn over we have professor Jovanini with us again u professor you were part of the UN high level expert group on beyond um GDP um I think there were you know this session is about simplifying the indicator framework there's different methods that can be used uh for this I guess fragile mentioned the literature on synergies and and inter interlinkages across SGS can you share with us professor uh the uh outcome of the work from the group that we're that you were involved in on the beyond GDP uh specifically that identify I believe a number of headline time indicators to go beyond GDP. Over to you, professor. >> Thank you very much Gom. Good morning, good evening, good everyone. Uh very interesting seminar and I hope that all the presentations will be made available uh by the organizers. As you know the UN secretary general has established a high level expert group on beyond GDP and we published our report in May and now the general assembly is discussing our report and they supposed to prepare um a resolution on it. the discussion is uh quite intense and heat in a sense. So I'm not entering really into that. And the report made a lot of recommendations to push not only international organizations but also national member countries and national institutions to measure what we called sustainable and inclusive. sorry, equitable, sustainable, inclusive well-being. But before entering into that, uh let me just share with you uh very few slides where I would like to underline the importance of what the pact of the future brought into the world discussion especially in terms of intergenerational equity. The concept of intergenerational equity is central of course for sustainable development given the definition established by the uh Bruntland report of sustainability. But uh around the world there is a growing attention on the way in which the uh sorry it looks like there is a problem with my presentation. It's coming now. the way in which the uh >> we could see your slide in the room. We could see your slide clearly in the room. Uh no longer now. Now we can see. >> Yes. Yes, we can >> because the fact of the future pushed um really under spot this concept of intergenerational equity which is very well known by experts all over the world and is one of the fundamental principles of how our society should um look like and work. Uh the importance um of the pact is also the fact that uh several actions are foreseen by the pact uh to speed up the implementation of the 23rd agenda and is extremely important the declaration on future generations which uh should push member countries uh to implement something that uh policies that are more anticipatory, adaptable, responsive for future opportunities, risks and challenges. The Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development has been very active in this field since its beginning 10 years ago. And we have managed also to change our constitution to make a reference to future generations and the interest of future generations. And then more recently we also convinced the parliament to pass a law by which each and every new piece of legislation has to be evaluated exante in terms of social and environmental impact on youth and on future generations. What I want to flag here is that we need indeed to adopt this intergenerational fairness or justice at the core of our measurement framework. This is what we have done at the joint research center of the European Commission where we decided to focus on the uh what we called sustainable and inclusive well-being well beyond sorry well before the um I HG the high level expert group of UN was established and the framework that we have developed and implemented in terms of indicators. As you can see, focuses on the well-being today, the well-being tomorrow, the inclusiveness, but also all the elements that build sustainability, including the different forms of capital, human, social, economic capital, natural and planetary boundaries, but also the safeguard of ecosystems and biodiversity, climate change, and also a key word, resilience. which in our view is extremely important. I'm making reference to this because if you compare what we had developed in 2024 with what uh the HAG has proposed, you find a very strong alignment. In fact, as I already mentioned, we are proposing to focus on equitable, inclusive, and sustainable well-being. Looking at the current well-being, but also the future well-being based on sustainability and resilience. On top, we propose to have the measurement of what we call foundational principles in terms of human rights, peace, and livable planet. And overall we suggest to focus on the well-being of people and planet. From this point of view, a lot of enablers which are embedded in SDGs are not taken into account simply because their means to an end. They're indeed very important. But what we recommend as HAG is to focus on outcomes or outputs not on inputs. Notwithstanding these uh focus we proposed to use out of the 31 indicators that we suggest to monitor, half of them come from SDGs. And in fact, a lot of countries have put questions on the floor why we were not just using SGS or a simplification of SDGs as a reference. And our answer was exactly what I mention now is that if we want to focus on uh outputs and outcomes in terms of equitable, inclusive and sustainable well-being, we have to develop even new measures for example for human rights, peace and livable planet. There aren't currently uh standards, statistical standards at world level. And this is where we recommend international organizations to work much more on this. Now just to conclude there is an important point and the HAG was not able to reach a conclusion which is the possibility of building composite indicators. We have been discussing this issue in hagg in for a long time and we didn't agree on how to move forward. This is why we recommend that the UN statistics division should establish a specific working group to address this um very complex with a lot of pros and cons as possible um pros and cons of different solutions. Now let me show you what would mean to have a composite indicator. On the left hand side you see a comparison uh based on GDP per capita of US uh red line and EU blue line. But if you look at the what we called equitable and sustainable well-being and is the right hand side of the chart you see on the top that in terms of well-being today which is a concept that is uh approximated by GDP badly approximated EU performs much much better than uh US. But then if you look at the um overall equitable and sustainable development sorry well-being where you consider also the dynamic of the different forms of capital including economic capital. You see the bottom uh right chart. Uh you see that the differences look uh less um big. Why? Because US uh with the high economic growth produces more capital that could be invested for various reasons not only on whatever is invested now. But um this means that growth is important. It's not the whole story but is important and you see that the differences are reduced. So in conclusion um I think that it's possible using our HLAC proposed framework to simplify but also to improve the current set of indicators for SGS and the post 2030 discussion. But we shouldn't forget that we also have to put investments in the development of models especially if we want to evaluate at national level the intergenerational equity dimension. the current models of variable available at world level or at national level are not uh fully able to do this kind of simulation and exant impact assessment. So it's just to say that there is a research agenda ahead of us not only for data but also for models. But the good news is that what has been done in various places of the world including the joint research center of the European Commission but also in other centers SDSN of course can be used by political authorities to design already a post 2030 uh agenda uh framework based on the concept of equitable and sustainable well-being which are which is exactly the definition that also researchers around the world are using more and more and much more than before. I stop here. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much uh professor and uh your presentation is of course at the heart of what we want to to discuss in this specific u session. So let me just ask you because we'll hear in a second from Dr. Sat also published a paper with a methodology about how to simplify um the the indicator framework that he will share in a second. But perhaps professor I would just like to understand you have identified the hleg 31 uh indicators. Could you summarize how you ended up what were the methods that were used to end up with these 31 headline indicators specifically? Was it statistically driven expert-based a combination of various methods? And then if you could just share very quickly because there is this work going on on beyond GDP. There is of course an SG indicator framework. Do you imagine um these frameworks to coexist in the in the future um or is the idea is that one would replace essentially that we would have a framework much more simplified for the next era of sustainable uh development. Could you just react to those two two points? Uh if you >> Yes, I start from the second question. I don't think that would make sense to force the two frameworks into a single one and the reason is because uh SDGs measures a lot of inputs correctly because they have to drive policies. So I would not recommend just to cancel it or start reconsidering it overall simply because the purposes are different. One is about uh instruments and you need to have a measurement of instruments while the other one is about outcomes and final outcomes. Of course, as we did in Italy, as we do in Italy since 2010 when we was president of the Italian statical office, we developed the set of indicators for equitable and sustainable well-being. Both are important and uh the two coexist in Italy for example and we have different discussions on SDG's reports and on equitable and sustainable development well-being report on the other hand your first question is in the report we describe how we achieved let's say the set of indicators looking at the conceptual framework that I briefly described well-being today, well-being tomorrow, the different dimensions of well-being today, our health, education, work and so on quite standard I would say uh domains on top we recommend to look at these foundational principles because without peace without without respect of planetary boundaries without respect of human rights there isn't any possibility to have well-being And on top we worked on this concept of equitable and sustainable well-being looking at the different forms of capital for sustainability and the measures of inequalities including the um indicators some of the indicators that you mentioned such as the multi-dimensional poverty index for example. So uh we'll see how the general assembly reacts is of course u um learning by doing especially because it's the first time at international level that this kind of discussions are taking place in with this new perspective and we'll see how the general assembly reacts. We made as I said a lot of recommendations uh recommending that each and every country develops its framework starting from the 31 eventually adding some elements but with this principle of being focused on outputs and outcomes not on inputs which is one of the purposes of SDGs. session. Can you tell us whether you incorporated also the issues that you mentioned intergenerational fairness but also the issue of transboundary effects, transboundary effects, the spillover discussion we had before is that part of either the work that you presented of the at the GRC or the beyond GDB the H leg work that you you have mentioned >> especially on the H leg. mention it but we didn't propose any particular um indicators because this requires not only data but also models in some cases. One one of the fundamental messages that we try to convey is that we should stop from being afraid of using modelbased indicators. Statisticians think that you only some statisticians think that you only have to measure on the field and everything that you do outside is something that for which you must be very prudent or stop uh also doing that but we know the GDP is a a strongly modelbased measure. So what we say is that uh more and more with intangible elements of well-being we shouldn't be afraid from using modelbased measures including those for the spillover effects on which we didn't enter because the what we wanted to propose was something that could be implemented in the short run and we also fixed a sort of rule proposed indicators for which more or less at least twothird of countries data points are available in order to make possible for the UN is one of our recommendations to start in 2027 publishing a world report on equitable and sustainable well-being that would be a strong signal of the idea of moving forward. >> Okay, great. Thank you very much uh professor and there might be other questions and comments for you also u so please stay stay with us Dr. you have a methodology you have published also many papers on this issue so the floor is yours thank you much okay I'm from peace and development and uh now up >> we can see it >> okay >> yeah so uh our issues have been working on the issue of post 2030 integrator frame Denmark uh since few years ago and uh we have recently initiated the joint research collab joint research collaboration initiative with SCSN which is represented in the center of the circles but uh today I'm going to um briefly present what we have been doing in okay so uh the the I think you already know that the the SG indicator framework. It's quite complex. Um there are 234 unique indicators but that's not the end of the story. Um there are over 600 series uh under these 234 indicators. Yeah. So the question is uh even I do not know exactly how many series there are in any point of time it's fractured and uh also um some series are only re relevant only to certain subset of countries for example marine well conservation area is not relevant to land countries etc. So I think it will be very difficult for member countries to precisely understand how many cities they need to report every year and this is not end of a story either and there are thousands of disagregated data that countries required to submit. So the um data um reporting requirement volume is enough and this is just uh illustration of the yeah the enormity of data requirements. So I just uh put the all the disagregation dimensions um developed by the CG framework. So I put the all the dimension but I have to say um these are not these are not the compulsory disagregation requirements. So there are some minimum disagregation requirements which is express shown in the red letters for example age status etc. So there are some uh uh minimum disagression dimensions countries are required to but all others dimensions are not at the moment it's definitely required to report but also many of these disagation dimensions are only applicable to only one series or at least a few but again there uh so many disabilation dimensions so but I should stress that uh as uh Mr. um in his video message in the beginning of this session. I think I have I am deep respect to the achievement made by the expert developed this uh extensive indicator framework which is um definitely no doubt it's a um remarkable achievement but I think we have to um strike the balance between comprehensiveness of the data framework and also um compilation cost and burden. So we need to um think about what's the um practical balance between and this balance could change over time because of uh development technology for example maybe the new technology AI based technology can enhance our ability to compile data with lower cost and time then maybe the balance could change time due to loical. So, so [clears throat] there the the current SG indicator program is a is quite complex and uh but countries have a limited uh resources to invest in comparation data. That in combination produce a a data gap issue and also data comparability issues because some countries submit not exactly the data required for the indicator but provide some similar data or it's a proxy that cause comparability issues and also um because the uh targets are very um extensive multi-dimensional but indicators are limited in number. Currently data framework can only uh measure part of only some part of targets. So and also there is a mismatch of uh monitoring needs of countries and the indicator we call. So based on this uh understanding of the current um situation what we proposed is uh it's kind of a three tier or framework. It's um firstly divided into um global indicators and the custom indicators and global indicators uh that it's a global and then that's applicable to all country but uh within this glo global indicators we suggest um having two categories one is core and the other is optional and core indicators are small of indicate indicators applicable to all countries And uh all country needs to report data. And on the other hand, optional indicators are long list of potentially useful indicators that member states can or any actors can adopt if it's uh fits to the needs. So the optional indicators are combined with a guidance and tools maybe. So that's uh facilitates the adoption of such optional indicators. And on the bottom of the diagram, there is a custom indicators or local indicators which countries and regions or other actors can set according to their monies local context. So um I will not uh introduce today about the our uh other kind of um research which try to um streamline indicators. Yeah. Which is based on the u statistical correlation analysis. But but I will focus on this part. So if I'm not sure if there is a diverging view on what would be desired design post 2030 in framework. But [snorts] suppose if there is a agreement on having kind of a global communicators and then uh I have several questions. For example, what would be a manageable side of such co indicators or should they be entirely common across all countries or there could be some uh subset of co indicators that can be applied only to certain subset of countries for example some indicators can be applied to small states island countries or developing countries as could subjective indicators or spo indicators be part of such a core indicator should say prior is outcoming indicators or it can include input or action activity indicators or both. And what other aspect should be considered? So I I I like to um hear opinions of stakeholders that participate this workshop. Yeah, I'm very much forward to your feedback. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh Dr. ST uh you have published uh very important pieces on this issue setting the scene on the importance and proposing some frameworks and some approaches for simplify simplifying the uh indicator framework. It was actually at the at the heart and at the origins of this partnership between SDSN and from the start um I just want to say that because we are behind schedule I don't think we will take a proper break so we'll move straight to the next session. There is coffee and water for those in the in the room here. And of course, there's a restroom for for those that might need to take a break. Let's move to um Dr. Andrew here um who will will who has done a literature review on these issues and then we'll open it up uh hopefully with some reflections and answers also to the questions that you shared Dr. Stole. Andrew over to you. >> Thank you very much uh Dr. Laure. Uh it is uh indeed an honor to be able to share some observations from the literature. Uh what we have seen from the SGS is that after 11 years of implementation uh there is only about 16% of the SGS which are on target. So we have a hypothesis that perhaps it may be because it's a little bit too complicated to implement. Uh and therefore we looked at the literature to try to learn what perhaps could be the literature teaching us or whether or not it's really true that the uh indicators are too complex to be implemented and therefore perhaps I'm sorry Jeremy I can't just Okay. So I've managed to find seven lessons from the literature regarding the indicators and how complex it is. Uh one lesson that was observed is that fewer goals and targets could reduce complexity to enhance implementability. Uh colleagues SNV and FA have reviewed the MDG and SG implementation. uh and they propose uh simpler framework organized around four categories of development within planetary boundaries. Provision of basic services for all human development and equity international collaboration. The reason is because the paper finds that the unduty size of the SG is too resource intensive and it makes it very difficult to monitor. Another paper by Alan and their colleagues suggests that the STGS is very complex and the risk of increasing the goals and targets for the new set of indicators will cause the same implementation challenges that have been faced by the existing framework and colleagues Benur and all found that the indicators currently are too broad and too unstructured and therefore very difficult to facilitate narrow analysis and communication. ation. The second method the literature is indicating to us is that if we want our indicators to be facilitative of implementation, they need to be specific and quantifiable to enable progress monitoring. The international scientific council documented that more than half of the SDG targets currently have vague descriptions like enhanced policy coherence which makes effective monitoring not possible. Our colleagues from the AI G SDG task team on uh statistics have also noted that vague targets make it very difficult to assess achievement and SDSM has also highlighted that measurement of progress is needed so that practitioners are able to implement strategies and allocate resources accordingly to where the priorities are. And by has also noted that at a subnational level, cities and businesses also need to have explicit targets to be able to drive their strategies and implementation. A third lesson is that policies should be systemically coherent and enhance synergies and reduce tradeoffs. Nielsen at all found that nature indicators have got opportunities where there are uh abilities to manage synergies and reduce [clears throat] tradeoffs. Uh Super Vega and Marco have reviewed SG linkages and found that existing tools are very difficult to measure the directionality and the strength of the SDG indicators. And the group of scientists for the SD uh sustainable development report finds that system level transformation is required for development and architecture and elder and all have found opportunities for synergies for example sustainable agriculture and integrated water management both contribute to better health. So perhaps uh this is very aligned to what profan had just shared with us that uh for indicators with spillovers there are a lot of opportunities to look at enhancing synergies and reducing trade-offs. Then a fourth observation that we see in the literature is that human development and economic development should be within planetary boundaries. Vanver at all have found that out of the nine planetary boundaries four of them are already at high risk and are in irreversible zones. Rendles at all have found that human development must be able to uh proceed without exceeding planetary boundaries. and the independent group of scientists have again highlighted the importance of a systemic approach for systemic system sustainable development. A fifth observation is the provision of basic needs is universally available but not universally provided globally. So Rhinard wrote that the provision of basic needs is universal with income in income elasticities of demand of less than one and universally agreed across cultures. Therefore to have global consensus on that is achievable. These include things like food security, health, education, water and sanitation, energy, housing and human security. Cerner and Ferner find similar observations. But what is interesting is SDSN's own analysis of the data found that access to basic services and infrastructure such as access to the internet, access to clean fuels for cooking is still not universally accessible globally, especially in lowincome countries. So perhaps this is an area where we could get global consensus on for global leaders. So what we see is that perhaps a tiered indicator structure will be able to accommodate global systemically and universally agreeable targets like systemic targets that are climate in nature uh includes spillovers and universally agreeable targets. agreeable targets like basic needs, food security, energy and housing which everyone can agree. But then perhaps because development is so complex, so many local conditions need to be considered. Locally contextualized indicators that are created by local actors and governments are required. So this is supported by the literature. Sato has written about a three- tier uh indicator framework. My colleague earlier uh Dr. STO had described it very well. Uh the task force on statistics also says that from the dimensions of the uh statistics it is important to have global indicators where all of it is measurable and perhaps some of the supplementary indicators that are more suitable at a national level. And there's also writings by BNG, BNG International that says that at a subnational level, local indicators that best fit the local context is needed and it should not be driven by the global level. However, after going through the literature, there is one area of further research that is perhaps needed, which is that global optional and custom local indicators. While very good because they allow the local authorities to set targets suitable for their needs and takes into consideration their constraints and their budget [clears throat] and their actual capacities. But this may lead to the risk of countries cherry-picking i.e. they choose optional indicators that are easy to achieve or sandbagging which is that they set targets that are easy to achieve. So perhaps this will be an area that we will research further about. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thank you very much uh Andrew for sharing this overview of the future. Um so we're at the end. I think we there was no add there's no speaker for this uh for this session. Um and so again the idea here is that I think many of us agree that there is value in simplifying um the indicator framework. It's very hard for a government to operate with 230 indicators. And if indeed the next phase of sustainable development is about implementation, the idea is to think how can we make this more operational of course for government so that we can uh we can uh make faster progress than we in the past and so simplifying the indicator is part of this. Now the big question is how how do we what are the methods that we can use to simplify the indicator frame? So Pragal of course has done a lot of work on the interlinkages, the synergies, the trade-offs. Professor Jovanini shared with us the outcome of the work from the beyond GDP uh framework. Dr. Sato has also proposed first the idea of a core set indicator and then having also flexibility depending on specific uh uh challenges faced perhaps across income level or geographies and so on. At this DSN we also have proposed um in the sustainable development report what we've done is basically to try to simplify with 17 indicators um and with 17 indicators we have we basically achieve um uh you know when we aggregate this it's basically collinear with the SG index which has more than 100 indicators and it's extremely highly correlated also if we take um progress over time so percentage points change we also have very strong correlation between progress on those 17 indicators than what we obtain with the 100 indicators. The point being that there's different methods out there that have been used to try to simplify uh those those indicators and what I would perhaps like to understand in the next couple of minutes is especially perhaps from uh professor Joe Banini and also from Dr. Sato is what do you see as some of the the pros and cons of various methods. So I think Dr. Sato you've explored purely statistical methods to try to achieve this. Um, Professor Joanini, I would also like to understand perhaps I think you know you ended up with 31 indicators perhaps what were some of the the debates the contentious issues that emerge among the groups um I guess it was perhaps a mix of statistic you you presented the framework so I understand there was a framework but then you know there's statistical methods um correlation analysis and matrices uh perhaps also expert expert judgment that went into this so per could you perhaps um enter the black box of what happened in these discussions about how to identify those those indicators and perhaps to the both of you and others around the room also do do we agree that um essentially to identify a sort of a a headline set of STG indicators that would be perhaps particularly relevant for operation no we need to build basically on um methods that would combine um various approaches statistics yes but also perhaps um expert judgment um as well and perhaps um other lessons that we've learned from from from the literature. Um so that would be perhaps and again Dr. you put out there some some questions also um but if you could perhaps also share from your side and professor Joani also your side your reflections on this because the two of you have made very um already some propositions about this and perhaps if you could share also the pros and cons of the various methods uh uh to to simplify the indicator framework perhaps starting with you Dr. Dr. to start it and perhaps. So um I uh presented the one research which is uh streamlining um data set by purely using correlation but we never uh propose that we only count on the statistical method because uh it's it's lose a lot of u important indicators which is not corre to anything but still it's very important. So think I think there is we should not count only on statistical analysis to identify cosiness. But on the other hand if we um count on only um [clears throat] expert judgment based selection of co indicators that could also uh end up with um a set of indicators which is which has a lot of correlation between indicators. For example, SG has 17 goals and uh which are basically divided by theatic areas. So if the indicators are selected in theatic areas then it will um there is high risk of ignoring a lot of synergies linkages which uh Dr. rather than just emphasize. So I think it's important to understand and be aware of these adages between indicator of different sectors. So I think my suggestion is to combine between these statistical analysis as well as um expert judgment based selection of based [clears throat] on for example principles set in in the case of DNG in sets. So there should be some kind of a principles of solution and which is um [clears throat] applied by a group of experts to in case but we should not forget doing some um analysis of between very good. Um, Professor Joani, can I also ask you to share with us a little bit some of the debates within the group around the the identification of those headline indicators that emerge? >> Yeah, as you can imagine, the discussion was quite uh intense. Uh, the good news is that we didn't have very much time to come out with the conclusion. This is why we uh relied on the uh we asked for example international organizations um experts in specific fields to recommend among the very many indicators that are available the most um the best let's say according to various criteria. On the other hand, uh we knew that we would have liked to have indicators much more um representative of the concept, but we knew that those indicators were not available. So we had to combine the physibility principle with the uh precision in terms of coherence between valuable indicators and uh the um our conceptual framework. But this is why we recommended on specific points uh that international organizations should take the lead to fill the gaps. For example, we discovered and that was quite uh interesting also from a political perspective that we don't have any harmonized UN stamped I would say set of indicators of human rights although human rights is one of the fundamental pieces of the charter of United Nations and the same applies to uh climate sorry planetary boundaries. is where we have a lot of uh proposals by academics very interesting very important for example the Stockholm resilience center and others but official statisticians have not put their official stamp on them. So what we hope is to also provoke and stimulate um a speed movement by the international organizations as it was done when the SGS were designed in order to have standards for those indicators for which we do not have even statistical standards or to the to speed up the production of data. In our paper, in our report, we recommend to follow the same three tire approach that was used by um UN for the SGS. But uh let me u conclude here with uh uh one big question or the as we normally say is the elephant in the room. If I had to choose in 2027 between reopening the Pandora box of indicators in a context of very low international cooperation spirit and to keep going with a current set of indicators. I would not have any doubt in keeping the current indicators and move forward because we know that some countries, some uh political uh uh groups uh just are waiting for this kind of discussion to kill the 2030 agenda, to kill the post 2030 agenda. And uh um as for the overall 2030 agenda, the SDGs will be indeed a battlefield where uh those countries want to stop the process will play their influential role. So any discussion I think will need to take into consideration this overall world state of cooperation. And from this point of view we hope that with our framework which is not subject let's say to any uh commitment official commitment by international organizations or by member countries we can proceed uh with measurement of equitable and sustainable well-being at national regional and global level. uh even if uh the discussion on SDGs and post 2030 agenda would face uh difficult comments. You very much professor for also bringing up this um this important argument around the desiraability or the aspirations but also the political feasibility uh of all of this into the into the the the discussion. Um for those also here around the table of course um we'll all remember and in the next session we'll have people that actually took part in the negotiations of the of the of the STGS in 2015 but there was a negotiation on the goals and the targets on one hand and a separate negotiations also afterwards on the indicator on the indicator uh framework as well so they were uh part of two separate uh processes uh time uh I see pragal has his hand up perhaps we'll need to wrap up this session very shortly. This is the beginning of course of a discussion. This is a kickoff workshop. So we'll go back to the v the the various speakers also uh in the coming weeks and months and and again we'll share also all the slides. Uh but this is the the start that we're just scratching the surface of future work that we plan to do with Jack or I today. Uh but please if there's any uh comments questions also I'm looking at my colleagues online as well. We'll start with Praal perhaps Gom and then if online there are questions also or comments um yeah we'll we'll go to them pragal first and then >> yeah maybe like I would like to mention that I don't like yeah I I question the hypothesis that government cannot deal with many indicators because there are many indicators data that government are using from different sector so recently I was like on Friday I was I was having a meeting with national planning commission of Nepal and and giving my my talk a bit more elaborated one. Yeah. And and and one of the thing that National Planning Commission of Nepal appreciate about STGS was how they were able to look at development in a holistic way. Yeah. With all those data set and so on and government of Nepal has even proposed like 435 or something like this indicator 4% 400 indicator to measure their progress. So, so basically here I'm I'm just while while listening to the discussion I was just thinking you know like our focus need to be on action and implic implementations rather than you know like whether this is the core indicator or that is the core indicator. So focus is still on action focus need to be to walk on the path rather than you know like this is the short path or this is the long path and then from different government I'm also hearing issue about data fabrications you see a perfect data of open deification like elimination of open defication on the paper but if you go around the villages yeah there is no to yeah so when there is low if there is less number of data then it might be easy to fabricate less number of data than more data let's have some reflection on that saying that I'm not against having some indices or aggregated aggregated uh indicator that reflect things for example with with with UNDP uh there is this exercise going on to come up with nature relationship index which will be published uh somewhere in in in September September not September but somewhere in October November along with human development index report. Now basically the idea is like not to have any boundaries but like planetary boundaries but to to think a bit more about aspiration like human development index as an aspiration index for the nature as well called nature relationship index. So so so I just want to reflect on this with these four points. >> Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you, Praad. And I think I think you're right. Of course, governments can measure a number of things. I think where there's been perhaps a failure is the incorporation of the monitoring with the rest of the policy cycle. Um, so how much is that monitoring that is done? Um, you know, a lot of governments report their official SDG indicators to the UN. Some have 100 indicators or 98 indicators. In Europe, hostile has 98 99 indicators. France the same. But then how much you know those hundred more than 100 indicators are they incorporated into the rest of the policies they call the budgeting the planning. I think our analysis at this DSM would suggest that it's very limited. It's sort of a siloed exercise. Could it be that if we have a more reduced or headline or more operational set of indicators that could allow to connect it with the rest of the policy cycle that that could be the case? I know and professor is still there with us nostat is monitoring the SDGs uh for Europe. At some point the European Commission incorporated an SDG annex within the European semester process which is the lead um process in Europe for microeconomic um coordination. So that was just an effort to start incorporating this assessment within the rest of the policy framework. But I think we see it's still a lot of gaps in the incorporation of the monitoring with the the rest of the policy cycle in government. And actually in the next session we'll actually hear from a number of governments on the on the the usage of the of the SDG indicators uh uh also you know in the rest of of policy making. I know Gi had had the comment or a question and then perhaps online do we have questions or comments? Um otherwise we will we will need to close the session because we're way behind schedule. So G and then we have a very short comment that echoes something that someone said on the chat actually. Um just a a comment something I haven't really heard of uh and I really like uh professor uh slide on comparing the the number of uh indicators of data availability across different global uh reports and then the difference we see between for instance the SDSN SDR and the UND report for instance um a lot of that difference uh it has to do with the UN's moto of country of country owned and countryled idea which is uh so each indicator has a custodian agency but they have to go look for that data point with the actual member states and that uh sort of creates these data gaps uh that sometimes really don't need to exist except for you know very um practical um um u multilateralism reasons with the want to impose uh data one anyone. So I think uh simplifying the framework also would help with that that there are there are many gaps that you know has have to do with the country countries not having the the the the statistical capacity to to accommodate many of them but so having less of them would make that simpler but I would be interested in hearing sort of the roots reaction on uh is is the countryowned countryled model really still a necessity an absolute necessity for the different the framework to work within the UN or is something uh we could maybe maybe move away from >> just a this is a com >> um so I don't know if there's any uh response to G's point or any final comment uh questions suggestions anything burning I'm just looking around the room here we about about the country want it depends upon the ownership. So if the country doesn't if we keep the data and the country doesn't want that whatever we do doesn't make sense. If the country agree on that then it's fine. If the countries doesn't agree on that then whatever we do will not make sense. >> But this this uh this pipeline doesn't currently exist right like the for for the for the UN to say oh listen uh we do have some data for you on on indicator X point X which would be okay with that. the this this pipeline is not uh >> there is isn't it like that's what the inter agency expert group meeting was doing this is how the indicator was was approved like cost agency was proposing certain methodology and so on and then there was a member countries who are discussing about those and then and accepting that methodology the the methodology was developed by UN agencies for that >> I am a part of the STGS and I very much feel like they are sometimes going against the encourage across the you know the the larger UND environment. So I do feel like this like their effort is commendable but it's it's not systematic we feel across the UN system. Um I have one point. Um I think and from my experience from Thailand I think um even among the UN capacity agency they also have to um they they they also struggling with uh how they work with the you know monitoring system in each country. Um for example uh one goal um under the target and the key indicators like a Thailand we have different agency that taking care of the each indicators. So when the UN a uh the custodian agency uh they have to they have to talk with several um you know government agency in order to get the um the data or even don't get the data because if that there's no connection data collection at that indicators so that's reality in the in the national level. Yeah, perhaps again. And then we'll close that session and move to the last session again. the the wording and the language itself also matters because even if we talk about countryowned and custodian agency and so on it comes back to human nature well this is mine so I'm not sure if that is not already reflecting part of the challenge of complimentarity of mutual synergies because in the moment where one institution considers that this is mine, this is my territory. And having worked with UNICEF for two decades, I know how prevalent that kind of mindset can be between agencies, but also within agencies. So I'm I'm just wondering if it might get worse as we're now preparing for the post 2021 to also maybe think about more unconventional aspects in terms of making monitoring and measurement valuable which is human nature and just the simple fact that the human being is not a rational decision maker and that a lot of the me and mine when it comes to data measurement and when it comes to mandates might actually what is at the end of the day the aim of this and maybe to start from the reverse with reverse engineering what is the final outcome human beings that are healthy that live in an environment that is sustainable and right now it's not sustainable and then the other One was a question for Professor Javani. Um, but did the question of meaning come up? Question of humans looking for spiritual grounding for meaning in a world that is complex because I know there's a lot of discussion going on about the immaterial um goals. So, has that also been part of the the streams that you were discussing. Thank you, >> Professor Jveni. I think there was a specific question addressed to you and then we'll hear your response and then we will that will be that this this session. Over to you, professor. >> Yes, thank you. Um we had quite extensive discussion on the issue of spirituality and we had also a discussion organized at the Vatican on this topic by Sabin Alairo who as you know has been working a lot on the multi-dimensional poverty but also on the Bhutanese well-being framework happiness sorry framework again we did not really enter into the capacity we didn't have the capacity of selecting this kind of indicators also because uh we have a an issue that I briefly mentioned before uh in terms of um model based indicators but is about subjective indicators where I would like to underline that member countries refused to include in SDGs any subjective indicators and during our discussion with UNA with the general assembly in preparation of this resolution several countries put questions on subjective indicators per se independently from the fact that a lot of statistical offices do not collect this kind of data. In our report, we clearly say that the subjective dimension cannot be uh discarded. But we also recognized that at world level there is only very few surveys mainly carried out by private companies such as Gallup or NOS's or universities. But again on this issue official statisticians are very prudent or even negative. So we try to open a door but from the very first discussions with the general assembly we see some resistances. Why? Well, it's understandable especially if uh member countries see this as a risk of a political judgment not simply uh reflection of subjective well-being of people. They some of them seeing this kind of surveys against as a risk for their power. So you see this is a um a very complicated topic which is relevant also for human rights because you may have a perfect legislation but in practice human rights are not respected. Therefore, the measurement of subjective uh perception of your freedom is uh absolutely uh necessary. So this is a com a very complex uh topic and I'm very curious to see what the general assembly will say and based on their answer on our recommendations I would suggest if as I hope there will be a sort of openness on this a much stronger commitment by national sical offices to go in this direction especially from some member countries. >> Thank you very much. >> May I just in one minute answer another question that came in the chat >> please? Please. Yeah, go ahead. >> Which is about the uh inter art artificial intelligence. We had another very uh long discussion on whether we had to include the technological dimension in our framework. And we ended with uh including this dimension in the section that we did not cover of the so-called enablers. Of course, we know and the data now evidence shows that artificial intelligence or social media or internet and so on can do a lot of very positive things but also can harm some dimensions of our societies. So instead of entering into a neverending debate on that we are suggesting to look at the final outcomes the state of population for example the health population the health status not only looking at the physical health but also mental health. So you see um we we didn't uh uh include the tools such as AI into our framework um or we put it in the enablers uh in together with other possible uh tools that really forge our societies and make people better or worse off. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you uh Enrio and again I think it's very valuable to have you here because you just concluded a very important process at the UN which specifically aimed to identify uh a headline set of indicators in this case on beyond GDP. So your experience and the insights that you are sharing with the group here is is extremely important and relevant for us and we'll we'll probably tap into also more into your expertise in the coming uh uh months uh as part of this initiative. >> Pleasure. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for being with us. Uh with that, I think we'll close this session on simplifying the indicator uh framework. Uh and we will move to the last session before the wrap-up um which is perhaps more on I mean we discussed the data uh challenges the opportunities provided by new technologies. We had a discussion about various initiatives that try to uh leverage several methodologies to simplify the framework. Now we want to also bring in some of the users of the data. So we'll have some national governments here sharing their experience with the SDG indicators but also some of the people that were involved at the time uh with framing and negotiating uh the SGS including also uh discussing the accountability infrastructure uh that is behind the goal the VNR process and also uh for instance the global sustainable development report. So uh we uh have we are you know very privileged to have with us ambassador uh David Donohoo who's the former uh permanent representative of Ireland to uh the UN. Um Ambassador Donohoo was of course one of the co-f facilitators of the SDG negotiations uh before 2015. Um so uh ambassador we've been tapping into your expertise a lot recently because we are about to enter into formal negotiations again as I mentioned at the beginning uh right after the SG summit in 2027. This will be the official kickstart of the post2030 negotiations. So we would love to hear from you uh and and hear also from the lessons uh that you that you had from the your experience as a negotiator. What do you see in terms of big priorities when it comes to strengthening uh the the monitoring and the accountability framework in the next era of sustainable development? The floor is yours. Again, we're going to try to stick to about five minutes interventions. Uh and we'll then open the floor for questions and comments. Uh David, over to you. I think you might be on mute. >> Sorry. Can you hear me now? >> Yes, we can hear you now. >> Great, great, great pleasure to be here or at least virtually here. I wish I was in KL itself. Um, Guom, yeah, I I'll address the points you raised. Um, my role as you say was to um in fact chair the negotiations on the SGS with uh with my Kenyan colleague. We happily allowed the uh indicators as you mentioned to be handled separately uh in a process which concluded several months later. We did that for very good reasons that we realized that those indicators would be best served by a process which was entirely technical neutral objective based on scientific evidence. We did not want political considerations to enter into them and I think by and large that was achieved. But to to answer your your first question about how to strengthen accountability generally, I'll talk first about the the high level political forum and the uh the voluntary national reviews and so on. But I wanted then to come to the indicators in a second. The the last 10 years have shown some strengths uh in terms of what we agreed uh for monitoring and accountability um but also a fair number of weaknesses. And one huge weakness is the budgetary limitations of the UN. The fact that um a tiny amount of time is made available in other words is funded uh to allow countries to actually come and present their their um VNORs and indeed increasingly VLRs. That is a major weakness and it has to be addressed by the countries who are the largest donors. One is a very obvious problematic case here and Enriiko Javanini made a very good point when he talked about certain countries planning perhaps to try to kill the SGS. I I I'll I'll say no more than that. We have to be conscious that we're we are not facing into as rosy a situation for the negotiation of the next agenda as we were for the the last one. the um reforms I would like to see assuming that we have something like the current agenda going forward would include uh a much better provision for the the crosscutting aspects of the agenda to be to be picked up. There's too much of an emphasis on national performance not enough on lessons which we learned from each other. there aren't actually enough formats to allow um lesson learning to allow civil society and other stakeholders to intervene. So it we we need number one more resources to allow the UN to provide more time literally for the HLPF each year and we need a much more flexible set of arrangements which would do justice to the holistic nature of the agenda and most of all to the the mutual learning which I think hasn't really uh been addressed. Issues like leaving no one behind have not been given enough attention. So very very briefly I I'll move to um the obviously the data challenge has been well covered. The quality of our monitoring and accountability depends on all 193 member states being in a position to provide the uh the data they need in order to furnish their reports. Many of them are not getting that data. they haven't got the capacities and that is a huge uh deficit in terms of what we what we set out to do in 2015 on the indicators. Um I have a certain sympathy with the idea that we should try to simplify them by having a smaller set if you like of essential indicators and then a a a remaining set of I think it has been called optional. I I I instinctively like that approach because the biggest problem for me is the number of uh smaller countries with weak administrative and statistical systems who are not able to uh make their full contribution in terms of data. We the global north have to help them and one way we can help them is by simplifying the range uh and in some ways the content of the indicators uh which were which we're using. Yes, I appreciate that. Let if we are to address for example leave no one behind that means disagregating a lot of data. In other words, going into a lot more detail. But on the other hand, um I think there's overall a risk of being too perfectionist. Um we need to have a more manageable set of essential indicators. I would pick randomly a figure of 50. I think the 17 doesn't quite work because uh I think one or two have mentioned this before. There are aspects which go beyond the individual goals. There are the interactions between the goals, the synergies and trade-offs and there are also issues around uh financial commitments which I suspect will loom larger next time. I mean for example goal 17 itself implies that there will be very specific concrete commitments made by the global north and I think we haven't heard the last of that. So if you like there are a number of issues which are crosscutting go beyond the individual 17 goals. That's why my instinct would be something like 50 but I'm I'm picking that figure from the air. The optional indicators would then be um things which a country can mention in its reports if it wants to but it doesn't have to. So in effect we are saying to the countries with the weakest statistical collection systems you just need to report on a given number of of uh indicators. I'm calling it 50 and that is I think it's a good way to proceed. We want to get everybody involved and and we're not getting everybody involved at the moment. There is a risk that we will let the best be the enemy of the good. Um I know that there are structural problems. One is that some of the goals do not lend themselves to quantifiable measurement and uh some earlier speakers made made good points there including the the the point about human rights not being subject to quantifiable measurement. I know that goal 16 is particularly challenging but there are three or four others. All I can say is I think within the essential indicators, we still have to try to improve what we are doing on those more challenging goals. So I that's probably my my five minutes. Guom, I hope I I've been comprehensible. So to sum up, I I I believe in reducing the current set of indicators to about uh 50 um and in um the reason being that we need to keep this as a as a single global agenda. I'm not in favor of by the way of um having a sort of separate indicators for um if you like a set of global indicators which then would have subsections relating to individual regions. I think let us keep the concept of a single set of global indicators and then later on as it were and separately if individual regions see merit in having let's say a set of regional indicators for for Africa for parts of Africa that's fine but we need to start with a a set of global indicators respecting the global nature of the agenda. Last point I'll make is that my sense is that over the last 10 years many national governments have not actually been able uh or or maybe willing to develop national indicators. That was always an option which we made clear in 2015. We envisaged that the global indicators would be matched by national ones but that doesn't seem to have been taken up and I suspect the reason is capacity restraints. I think European countries have developed some but on the whole we are looking at I think global indicators and possibly some regional indicators as the likeliest way forward. I don't really believe that we're going to get much in the way of national sets. I could be wrong but it comes down to resources. So hope that's been clear and thank you for a very very interesting workshop. very clear uh David very very clear and again very useful to get your view since you were at the heart of the previous negotiations um just for you to know David so we did a survey at SDSN which was presented in the latest sustainable development report and we tried to track how many we had about 60 countries um covered how many countries did develop indeed national SDG indicators so that's not um uh equivalent to reporting to having a data portal that reports on the status of SG indicators but properly Having done an exercise to identify what are the the indicators that are particularly relevant for the country uh we had about 58.5% of the countries that we covered that did develop this. Now the approaches are very different. It goes from countries that have 50 or 60 indicators to countries that have 150 and or 200 indicators. And what we notice also is very few integration as I said before with the rest of the policy cycle. So the budget process, the planning process um and so on. Um so I just wanted to share this because we we do have some some data uh uh around this. Um now please stay with us because I'm sure there will be also comments questions on these issues. And now let's move to uh Marian Bang. You're a senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security um affairs. You've done a lot of work on the VNR process, but you're also I believe part of the independent group of scientists as well that is working on the GSDR with Phoebe. So Marian, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Guom. Um I organized my input around three questions since you asked me to talk about the high level political for forum on sustainable development. The first question is what is the HLPF? Second is what role does the indicator framework play and the last one is then about potential reforms. So what is the HLPF the high level political forum on sustainable development? What is it not and what has changed over time? With the adoption of the 2030 agenda, the HLPF was designed to be something like the central governance hub for the SDGs. It was given, and I quote, a central role in overseeing a network of follow-up and review processes for assessing progress in the implementation of sustainable development commitments. And on this basis then the forum shall give political leadership guidance and recommendations for the future implementation of sustainable development. So that is the core mission of the HLPS. It is important to note that it's not a monitoring system. Back in 20145 member states could not agree on this language. They chose to call it followup and review rather than monitoring and evaluation or monitoring, reporting and verification. Governments stated that the goals are non-binding and they expressed that they are primarily or only that's actually even in Paris of the 2030 agenda primarily or only accountable to their own citizens not to the UN or other member states. Nevertheless, the stateled process around the voluntary national reviews at the HIPPF enjoys broad participation. We have more now more than 400 voluntary national reviews that have been presented. But the HIPPF is mainly about peer learning and mutual experience sharing and not so much about monitoring and evaluation. In doing so, it builds on the regional forums and as David mentioned now, we also see many voluntary local reviews. So, it is a multi-level governance system that involves not only governments but also substate and non-governmental actors as parliamentarians, mayors, other representatives of local governments, civil society, private sector representatives, scientists and experts, international organizations and others. And it is important that this 8-day meeting of the HLPF is just the icing on the cake. What really matters are the national and local level preparatory processes and then hopefully also the followup of lessons learned. Ideally, the international forum benefits from the national level learning and vice versa. The national level participants will benefit from lessons learned shared at the international meeting. And that's then the uh basis of the political guidance that the HIPPF is expected to provide. The HIPPF has also history of reform. There have been three rounds of UN General Assembly negotiations on the review of the HIPPF's format and organizational aspects in 2021 24 and this year 26. But unfortunately there have been almost no significant progress. only minor changes have been agreed which was again due to conflicts particularly over sovereignty and budget implications. So what role does the indicator framework play at present? The UN secretary general and the UN statistics division officially launched the official annual SCG progress report during the opening session of the HLPF. It's a very short five minute presentation mostly aggregate figures and some trends. Each annual HRPF conducts then more in-depth review so five to six so-called SDGs and focus and at the beginning of each panel session there's a very short data snapshot and there's no mandate to present national level data only aggregate data there's a specific evaluation for certain groups of countries African countries LDC's LLC's middle inome countries and sits and for the VNR for the voluntary national reviews countries work with their own data and cherry pick what is reported and what data is used and this is also because there are only voluntary UN secretary general guidelines for preparing the VNRS. So the reforms how could the HBF be improved? Actually there are many recommendations in the literature that we will assess for the 2027 global sustainable development report. But we don't have no time for all this here. So for now I'll conclude with a few remarks that focus on the indicator framework. First a word of caution. I fully agree with professor enrio jiovon nini then on the opening of the panderas box. We need to be very careful here. Moreover, uh my colleagueuh Laura P from the Pathfinders has recently argued and I quote, "It is crucial to recognize that major shifts in goals, targets, and indicators could jeopardize significant investments in hardborn gains in the context of the push back of the 2030 agenda. Maintaining continuity in data systems is essential. Still quoting especially for countries with limited resources where dismantling or redesigning existing systems would be costly, counterproductive, and risk eroding the trust and capacity built over the past decade. The priority must be to protect and enhance the existing data capacities while continuing to adapt and improve systems to meet national priorities and local strength um needs. So for me what matters most is that the HLPF and its participants actually work with the data make data more relevant for the SGS reviews the DNRs and the international and country level followup. A set of headline indicators may be one way to highlight certain aspects but there are also other options for example evaluate the data and provide a much clearer explanation of what it means for the actual implementation of the SGS. We need a Hans rustling approach of communicating and visualizing data and trends. If you're not familiar with this Swedish researcher, please look him up uh online. This kind of translation is needed to make help policy uh makers act on the insights provided by the data. disagregated data, digital means as Phoebe mentioned, uh citizen data. This is all part of this and also linking it better with other data like from human rights council uh reporting and other UN processes. Now we have beyond GDP hopefully member states will agree to work with this. So um last but not least to wrap up I think it's also important to work with and combine data from beyond the indicator system to study correlations with policy shifts. Only this will help governments and other decision makers tackle the how question and establish which policies and measures have made a difference. So the linking of the outcome and the the measures that have been mentioned before because this is more about more uh than just measuring trends. It's about what works. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh thank you very much Marian. And I guess on just on your last point I guess you know the connection between the outcome and the policy shifts. It's true that if you have to do this with 200 or 230 indicators it's very uh complicated. Um and so it's also I guess connected to our previous discussion around the the simplification um and and the need to identify some of the drivers of progress with the simplified uh indicator framework as well. Um stay with us because I think there might also be comments and questions for you. You've done a lot of work also on the the voluntary national review process the HLPF and so on. So that's that's very interesting to get your your perspective on all of this. We're going to shift from sort of the global level to users at the national uh level. So we are happy to uh have with us Mr. Asam Kasbanit the the director here of the national SDG center at the ministry of of economy in Malaysia. It's interesting because colleagues previously mentioned uh the increased number of voluntary local reviews. Malaysia in our report is actually one of those countries that has done a lot of voluntary uh local reviews as well. So please Mr. as Fazam Kaspani if you could share with us also the experience of Malaysia in the use of STG uh indicators. >> Uh thank you so much uh good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Um it's an honor to be invited by university to be also participating in this uh dialogue. Yeah. Uh I would touch on four areas. The first one is on institutional setup uh in Malaysia and number two is on the uh policy implementation. uh linking to policy shifts in some way. And the third one is about data and last but not least is about uh monitoring and evaluation. Uh uh I mean the the concept of STG in Malaysia I would pretty much say that uh has been already embedded in the uh uh government system. Uh the Malaysia has been active in the local a 21 years back. uh come development goals MDG year 2000 to 2015 and and now is in the SDG era right so um in the structure itself um Malaysia's u u uh development planning uh as translated in the uh Malaysia plan now is 13 Malaysia plan pretty much looks into the um the whole governing uh the whole uh uh SDG matters uh social economic environment and that that same and uh and that itself is actually reached the highest level of uh uh governance in terms of its implementation and so approval of uh projects, initiatives and all that. uh under the SDG banner uh the government in 2022 has agreed to set up the uh national SDG council which is chaired by the prime minister himself. So um and underneath that uh Malaysia has also a steering committee meeting chair by the minister of economy uh and u down there is a technical committee meeting and down there there are few others uh working committee meetings uh uh various ministries lookingic areas well-being um environment issues uh and localization and all that and on top of that uh in the spirit of SG leaving no one behind whole of nation approach uh which we have been uh uh accepted for many years now uh we have also representative from the NOS's CSOS as well as private sectors which is co-ched by Sanu University and Busa Malaysia so what it means is that in implementing SDG in Malaysia is not just um the government along it is also um uh idea u u efforts by various parties including the csos uh as as well as private sectors. Okay, number one. Number two, um uh just now I mentioned about the RMK u 30 Malaysia plan. So if you look into 13 Malaysia plan is actually a very comprehensive Malaysia practice this mediumterm uh planning five year five year plan and now we are already 13th year uh 13th uh period. So from beginning from 2026 until 2030 it also shows um a right in the uh implementation of the uh final phase of uh SDG. Um uh so we are hoping that by 2030 we are able to tick the box and achieve most of the uh SDG issues uh and gaps uh in Malaysia. But definitely there are many other um development issues uh going on still in Malaysia while we are having a good electricity as simple as that you know but uh in Saba and Sawra some parts of Malaysia there are some gaps and pockets here and there um all right so uh what I'm trying to say is um the the policy itself has already catered for SDG um and we are looking at federal level policy And this has also um uh mirrored at mirrored at the state as well as local authority level. If you go into the uh Sabah state policy for instance, they have al they have this policy they call it uh Sabah Majuaya 2030. Sabah going forward 2030 which pretty much mirror the Malaysia plan mirror the sustainable development goals. Uh Sawa postcoid 20 uh 2030 also has because of that covid it also an opportunity for them to look into how they would ensure that their state development actually uh align with the SDG and also Malaysia plan. Uh okay, the third one, uh data. Um I I mean I I've been hearing uh tons of discussion about data just now and much of it I pretty much agreeable. Uh but the problem is uh at the uh federal level, I'm I'm I'm actually from the national STG center looking to Malaysia's uh uh monitoring, implementing uh analyzing uh STG data for Malaysia as a whole. So and we pretty much uh support uh the uh national data which is uh guarded by the national stats office NSO which is actually DOS right department of statistics Malaysia is is the official data for Malaysia. So if you look at it uh only 84% is available uh for uh SG indicators. I'm talking about the indicators. Uh you know SDG we have 17 goals to 169 targets and 251 indicators. Uh so only 84 uh% is available. Uh but more than that we are also uh looking into the local level and at the local level only 33% uh data available. So my point is uh as much as we would like the data to be comprehensive and I saw that uh maybe a simple set of uh indicators would also uh better in going forward. Uh the the the issue is um the capability of the our our NSO uh national status office the capability of our policy makers the capability of our state level uh policy makers and also government in getting the right data to really reflect their development. it is an issue uh to this speed although there are efforts to make sure that the data uh is available um um as we go along uh but I foresee uh by 2030 we we still have cap uh in terms of getting those so it's not and it's not that long just three or four years four years down the road right so um and uh uh putting more or or adding more uh indicators will definitely uh give a challenge uh to countries like even countries like Malaysia. Uh last but not least in M& um I would put it as a simple uh reporting kind of u practice. Uh yep uh Malaysia has uh produced its third VNR report. uh and you were there at CHPF I was there um uh last year uh July um uh so uh so I think the spirit of that is pretty much uh because it is actually a post four year uh reporting it's pretty much reporting what has done what what are the achievements what are the challenges and those charact uh we think uh these are the accelerated initiatives going forward to 2030 uh but I what I what we like about the whole idea of HRTF is uh uh sharing best practice learning from each other you know doesn't matter which which whether you are developed countries or upper Vietnam countries like Malaysia you know uh but there is there is an element of sharing uh of what's good in other countries uh and what's uh what can we learn from from that so in the context terms of monitoring. Uh that is Vienna. Sorry, that is Vienna. Uh we're talking about lo local reporting. Yeah, we are now Malaysia has 156 local authorities. Uh so so in Malaysia, we inherit this governance from the British, right? Federal, state, and so the local authorities. So we have 13 states. We have uh uh 156 local authorities. uh 156 out of uh 156 56 reports it's available for for Malaysia and Malaysia is actually among the countries that produce uh the highest VLR uh as of now. some of some of it is on the way uh to the UN to be to be published but uh it's not a requirement under HRPF but nonetheless is uh also a commitment by the local authorities to uh really reflect their SG implementation at the local level. Um so what we did now uh when we monitor our data is pretty much from the policy that we have uh we then um identify what will be the targets by 2030 by 31st December 2030 what will be the targets for each indicator the targets here don't be confused with targets uh of SG here is more on KPI uh key performance index or the value of the indicators and then uh we then do a simple regression linear regression and then we project those and uh the current analysis that we have shows that uh we'll be around 49% uh uh will be achieved uh and that is based on um DOS's data from 2023 and uh un unofficially we foresee that the figure will be higher uh based on laws data 2024 uh because we have yet to go into the council. I think Andrews know the figure but we have yet to go to the council. So what I what I can say is the figure is much much more positive. Um um yeah. So if you want to compare to uh the sustainable development report uh published by the UN uh in 2025 is around 80 18% u global performance but the reason one uh is actually slightly less around 15%. So I think Malaysia is pretty much uh above there. Uh but there are still um uh improvements and also gaps that needs to be addressed especially at data level. So I think uh I stop there. Um so u my last uh uh my statement pretty much about uh I think Malaysia looks forward for any uh efforts uh any uh initiatives to ensure the data is is better robust and easily trackable. I'm using trackable that's my own language. So otherwise it's just it's just very superficial. it's just too complicated that if you attempt to understand the meta data is actually very complicated. Not many people can understand. So I think it goes back to the capacity of the NSO and also the policy makers to understand those and try to find the data uh as as as best possible. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much Mr. Caspani uh for sharing the experience of the the Malaysia SDG uh national center uh and also of course for the uh the SDG [clears throat] the experience of the SG council here in Malaysia chaired by the prime minister who was actually with us today in a conference that SDSM was organizing on GBA as um you mentioned the of course the issues around data availability and data gaps in Malaysia but this is also the session where indeed the idea is to understand from the users also how these SDG data are being used and connected with the rest of the policy cycle and I think it's interesting and perhaps you could share a little bit more within the SDG national center in Malaysia how um are the national and international assessments of SDG indicators how are they discussed and perhaps connected with um perhaps the planning uh departments or the budgeting departments for instance um are there discussions where the NSOS presents um the progress of the indicators and is that connected with other functions within governments including planning and and budgeting uh if you could share perhaps just quickly some >> uh yeah um I mean there are few other major things going on uh but one of them is actually is on road map we have this uh this initiative we call it as sustive goals phase three uh road map 16 minutes 2026 and 20 2030. So what we intend to do is uh uh we want to know what each ministry is what each agency is doing uh to support indicators by 2030. So by having this kind of basic analysis of uh data that record we will then uh tell the ministries uh agencies that uh you are either underperforming or you know uh uh you are on track uh in getting things done uh by 2030. So it's very important actually the data helps us in terms of connecting what needs to be done uh with them and it's also to tell them that um because to be frank I'm sure in many other countries as well uh the implementation is done on silo basis uh you know ministry of works we look into the bridges the roads and all that they don't they don't know much about the impacts of that right and the impacts of that usually uh will go across the cross social economic health and all all that right so that's the role of the ministry economy that's role of national SD center to tell them that hey your your your your bridge your roots your your electricity your your your u uh digital connectivity helps the uh people living in Saba Sarawa in achieving their human development yeah the connection is there um challenges definitely there you know uh especially when you when you are liing with um agencies ministries who work who who is only focusing on their their scope or their mandate in terms of you know getting the infrastructure done you know without understanding what's what's behind that that even still in Malaysia we have that thinking still >> very good well thank you very much Mr. as money and and what you're saying is basically connected to what Jeff said at the opening of the meeting that this is a very complex agenda for governments to to implement because uh of course it cuts across you know various uh ministries and departments and often some of these transformations do require actually to work uh across departments and ministries because there are synergies trade-offs across those various indicators >> I I actually have a video are you okay with that maybe I can because we have speakers here and we're behind schedule. So perhaps we you you say you have a video. Okay. Perhaps at the end if we have perhaps the time at the end that that might be a nice concluding video at the end of the the workshop. But let's move to our next uh speakers. Uh we have now Dr. Cameron Allen from Monach University. Uh I think Cameron is with us. Yes Cameron. Uh you've done a lot of work on data. You've also published a very important paper on a theory of change for post 2030. So please share with us your your thoughts this discussion. Over to you Cameron. >> Uh well thanks very much G. I might just share a few slides if I may. Um can you see those? >> Yes we can see. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. >> Okay. Brilliant. Um so well thanks for inviting me to speak and I'm sorry I can't be there in person. It's been a really interesting discussion so far. I I'll jump straight in. So I'm going to talk a little bit about our post2030 initiative as well as this theory of change approach to SG's monitoring and review. Um so quickly on the post 2030 initiative, it's a um it's an initiative that we launched in 2024 which brings together SG scholars and experts who have been doing research on the SGS over the last decade or so. It's uh co-convened by MES University where I work and the Stockholm Environment Institute and we've been doing a workshop series and joint activities um to basically try to synthesize and then bring together some um some practical recommendations to feed into the post2030 negotiations. Um we've had a a workshop in Jakarta and in Stockholm and we have another one coming up in Quoal Lumpa. Um, and the first phase has really been about synthesizing evidence and lessons learned from the STGS and from the academic research that's been done. And phase two will be sort of developing more practical proposals for post 2030. And one of the outputs that we've had so far is this theory of change approach to assess post 2030 proposals which is um what GM just mentioned. Um so this is um a a paper that we put uh published in science in uh in January this year. Um and I guess the the framing is really that you know there's many different proposals that are coming out now to um to make you know potential improvements or changes or revisions to the post 2030 agenda. And if we take a step back and take a theory of change approach it can help us to assess their impact and feasibility. Um so you know if if we want to design proposals around improving the post2030 monitoring framework and and review framework um it's important to consider a few questions. You know what what is the problem and the gap a barrier that that needs to be addressed? Uh is it an important barrier? um how would this proposal actually address it and would it do it effectively and um is the proposal also you know feasible technically, financially and politically particularly given the the context that we find ourselves the multiateral context at the moment. Um so if we want to put forward proposals on the post 2030 monitoring and review framework I think to begin with it's important to have a clear diagnosis of what has and hasn't worked in relation to monitoring and review. Um, and I I won't go into this diagram in a lot of detail. If you're interested, you can take a look at the paper, but this is the um an what we call an implicit theory of change which we extracted from the post2030 agenda. Um and there's sort of a central a central pathway moving from top to bottom that you can see running down the middle there which is really you know the assumption with the SGS is that the adoption of global goals will lead national governments to localize them and incorporate incorporate them into their strategies um set national targets etc. These will then lead to the mobilization of actors and resources which will ultimately you know deliver the transformations that we're after and achieve the STGS and this central pathway is then supported by you know what we call the means of implementation which is your capacity building um finance uh governance technology and innovation and on the left hand side in blue the um the monitoring and review and feedback component of the 2030 agenda. And um and there's assumptions built into the monitoring and review framework as well that um you know there's an assumption that you know collecting more national data um including these uh regular monitoring and review provisions will support global oversight through the high level political forum. It will increase transparency and accountability. um it will improve the availability of evidence for decision-m and it will lead to improved strategies and implementation. But I guess the question is has this you know have these assumptions actually played out in in in practice. Um and I think you know they have to to some degree there's there's you know there's certainly things that have worked with the the monitoring and review framework. Um and I think the SGS have really strengthened the supply and visibility of sustainable development evidence. Um we have this common global indicator framework. We have more data, expanded coverage and availability, more comparability across countries. We have stronger statistical capacities. There's been a lot of work building national statistical capacities to monitor the SGS. We have, you know, almost universal uh coverage of countries submitting VNRS. many have done two, three or even more than that. Um, and overall I think this is it has uh supported uh transparency as well as peer learning and peer exchange through the HLPS. Um, in terms of what hasn't worked well, I would argue that the SGS have really created only a weak feedback from this, you know, this supply of evidence to improve decisions, actions, resource allocations. And ultimately um these are the things that that drive progress. Um and some of the challenges have been that you know this has been discussed a lot today. This broad and complex frameworks difficult to operationalize. Um but also you know the review provisions in in the VNRS they're voluntary. They often been quite superficial. I think someone earlier called them selfies. Um and they've lacked any validation. um the increased volume of evidence hasn't immediately translated into better decisions or resource allocations or actions to to enhance progress on the STGS. And in reality, you know, just supplying evidence isn't isn't really enough to to change decisions. Governments weigh up evidence with, you know, political realities, lobbies, invested interests, public support, fiscal capacity, and constraints. Um and while there's been this increase in transparency, there hasn't really been an increase in accountability. So the HLPF and national mechanisms, monitoring mechanisms have really been unable to hold governments account for implementation of the SGS and or incentivized enough action. Um so with that said I think u you know if we're looking ahead to the post 2030 agenda it's important to reflect on um a few things you know in in practice reporting has focused on you know more on the status of ind individual indicators with less attention to why progress has occurred what the barriers are that remain or what should change. Um so the post 2030 challenge is not just about improving or simplifying the the indicators. It's also closing this feedback loop between monitoring, accountability and action. Um and better evidence is is is crucial but it's insufficient. Government also need the the capacity and the incentives to to act on it. So, I I just sort of had a think about this in the leadup to the workshop that, you know, if we're we're looking at um some potential recommendations for the post 2030 agenda, we could think about shifting the emphasis from simply just reporting on on progress to actually steering progress. Um and this would mean shifting from you know looking at uh what happened to understanding why it happened and what needs to change. Moving from indicator status, trends and rankings to progress towards targets, milestones and and pathways and moving from retrospective progress reporting to forward-looking scenarios, pathways and interim milestones. Instead of showcasing policies and good practices, we can assess implementation policy effectiveness and their distributional impacts. Rather than just communicating evidence in reports for comparison, we can bring that evidence into debate in cabinets, in parliaments, in audit institutions and stakeholder accountability mechanisms. Instead of monitoring um you know being separate largely separate from fiscal decisions, we can feed these findings into budgets in public investment decisions, financing allocations. And finally, instead of voluntary sort of irregular reporting cycles, we can focus on learning and accountability to trigger the adaptation of of strategies and policies and institutions and and resources. That's not to say none of this is is happening at the moment. it is but it's not been done systematically and and I think um these are some sort of recommendations that we could put forward to um to assist with implementation of of any future uh post2030 agenda. Thanks. >> Thank you very much Cameron especially also for sharing this final table and these very uh clear thoughts about how to move from not only transparency but actually strengthening the accountability. uh it's been said a number of time indeed that the VNRS are largely selfies increased transparency but not necessarily accountability. So thanks for sharing your your views uh in this last table and please stay with us because we want to have a conversation and a discussion at the end of the session also on um let me now invite our last uh speaker uh of this session uh to share with us his thoughts. This is Dr. Grab Graham Long from Newcastle University who will also share his thoughts on governing by global targets and indicators to achieve global and local impact. Uh Dr. Long, the floor is yours and then please prepare your comments if you have questions. >> So hi everyone, thank you for the invitation to uh speak. It's been a very interesting event. I'll try and be fairly brief. Um I was told that the my slides would be shared by the secretariat. Is that right or should I run my slides now? So, so I should run my slides. >> Uh, just give us one minute. >> Okay. And I'm happy to do it. I've got it here. >> Okay. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. So, uh, first slide, please. Um, so, um, I've got kind of two fundamental points to make. I guess one point which kind of follows on very closely from the presentation just now is about thinking or kind of conceptualizing the role of monitoring and especially kind of this session on effective monitoring in a broader account of how the STGS are supposed to generate change. So as professor Giovanini said earlier um you know the the um SGS are meant to drive policy and kind of reconstructing an account a bit like um Dr. Allen's account of kind of how the SGS might drive policy. You can think about them being a non-binding kind of governance framework which has uh which is kind of importantly universal but also nationally owned and there's a tension there to unpick uh that comprises goals targets indicators but also norms and institutions and by norms we mean some of the guiding principles like indivisibility or the idea of sustainable development that the SGS embody or the principle of leaving no one behind and what that kind of means for the treatment of vulnerable and marginalized populations and governance through goal setting and this isn't my phrase it's Frank Beerman's phrase ries um works through uh competition and reputational accountability. So kind of people knowing what other places are doing and then that driving change or kind people being able to spotlight what a country isn't doing. It works through learning as people have mentioned. It works through partnership and collaboration. So partnership is also a norm maybe a metaorm of the SGS and it works through kind of spreading these ideas. So spreading uh for example the idea of leaving no one behind and that translating uh gradually into um kind of practice where every country's VNR has a section on leave no one behind. that wasn't the case you know when the goal started. Uh next slide please. So point one I think it's important to reflect on the effectiveness of monitoring in terms of its contribution to that I mean I guess the importance of data more generally and the importance of an indicator framework in terms of its contribution to that account of how the STGS are supposed to drive change. Um so just to kind of offer a few reflections here some of them very straightforward some of them I guess maybe introducing some new bits. Um so targets are benchmarks and indicators allow for assessment of progress towards those benchmarks. And so there's kind of a there's an element of missionbased governance here. Um indicators allow for kind of they enable as people other people have said accountability. They don't constitute it but they kind of allow for it. Uh and they allow for learning as well. Um so having a monitoring system requires that somebody does some monitoring and by creating a monitor somebody with that role you create an institutional home for caring about the SGS in a national or international system and that's an important contri contribution as well. Um and the kind of the flip side of that is that who is appointed to monitor what is an expression of how the SGS are nationally owned. Um so how a country chooses to integrate it into the actions of its uh national audit office or into its parliamentary committee structure um you know is is an expression of how the goals are nationally adopted and owned by countries. Um monitoring can also embed norms. So I think kind of the the way that disegregation is tied to sort of a realization of the idea of leaving no one behind the way that them features in the the beyond 20 the beyond GDP report for example makes you know a very clear commitment to the important disegregation um is is a way in which kind of monitoring systems can sort of express you know what gets monitored and by who also expresses this kind of question of the the underpinninging principles of the framework. So people have talked as well today about monitoring interlinkages better and that kind of thing. Um also you know in terms of partnerships it's certainly clear that partnerships might be required for monitoring and so people have mentioned citizen generated data monitoring can also prompt partnerships. So knowing where the gaps are knowing where performance is weakest can kind of provide a sense of where partnerships ought to be generated. Uh next slide please. So just in two slides I wanted to reflect and kind of pose a bit of a challenge maybe a bit more directly for this event and for kind of the program of work about what we what we conceptualize as being the change that we want or we expect from a simplified SG indicator set. So I guess on the one hand it might be intuitive to think that having a simplified set of indicators might make for easier monitoring and it might promote integration into national processes and institutions. So the beyond GDP report says this very simply I think at one point this is about lowering the barrier to implementation. Um and I think you know GM said something kind of earlier as well is an expectation that this would fit into a policy cycle easier if it's to be implemented and so there's a kind of a thought here with a implementation. So certainly and you so so accountability is mentioned as well like integration into policy cycles through a smaller set of indicators might allow for stronger formal accountability. It might allow for more ready comparability. Uh it might allow for bodies within a country's policy cycle to take ownership of the SGS to a greater extent and monitor those things and then in a in a way that would influence um policy. Um I think the challenge is what about the SG targets and norms that aren't that don't have indicators in a simplified set. And clearly if you're simplifying um a set of 169 targets and uh 230 odd indicators into 31 to 50 indicators something's got to give. Um um and I think the challenge really is about what gives who decides and what might be left behind in that move. Uh so next slide please. So final slide. Um just to kind of point out a few potential ways in which this might impact the agenda. So it might change the balance between universal ownership. So universal applicability and national ownership if you have a very small set of core indicators. You seem to allow or invite much greater optionality or you can't you're going to the SGS don't function the same kind of way as a check and challenge framework where if a country doesn't measure something that's in the SGS you ask them why they're not measuring it. Uh because there will be a smaller set to to refer to and more space in which countries are measuring extra things that they have kind of greater flexibility over. Um you might think that a shortened or focused indicator set risks a truncated whole of society agenda. So just simply by reducing the number of things you monitor. You might find fewer points at which different organizations within societies different civil society groups firms can kind of find a connection to the agenda and that might matter. It might also lead to a truncated leave no one behind agenda. So disegregation is still kind of very much explicit but of course some of the targets and indicators are in the STGS precisely to identify elements or ways or kind of spheres in which people are disadvantaged. Um so there's a target very directly on um uh workplace injuries that calls out migrant groups as being particularly of interest when it comes to doing dangerous jobs and being injured in the workplace. Um and so it's not just about disagregating the indicators you put in your central set but also the indicators that were there for leaving the one behind purpose that you're no longer putting in that central set. This is an interesting question which um came up in the context of beyond DP uh work. My final thought about whether being a simplified set means more focus on high level outcomes. This is a very definite choice as professor Gioini Giovenini says in the kind of the context of beyond GDP to go with an outcome set of indicators and that's an interesting question about whether that's kind of consonant with the SGS approach and professor Jin was very clear that kind of the SGS also require some inputs or enablers or kind of the the elements that would drive you along towards those outcomes and I think if the choice is made to go for a more outcome set because going for an outcome set means you somehow integrate this easier into policy cycles because the outcome indicators are brought in kind of more straightforwardly. You might achieve integration into a policy cycle. I think the question that this poses is what the cost might be for the agenda and for the agenda's model of change whether that's a cost worth bearing. Um so just going to close with this challenge which you know you know reflects hopefully a lot of what people have mentioned but going to bring it all together. Um I guess the question is so is it is it the case that somehow in going for a smaller simplified set of indicators in some sort of way that you can preserve the spirit of the SGS those kind of that broad range of targets the ambition the complexity the commitment to leave no one behind um whole of society implementation or is is there you know are we talking about a compromise in terms of this the spirit so if you monitor a simpler set is the idea to somehow preserve all of that and if so that's a very high bar or instead is the idea somehow the kind of you know in in the push for implementation that some of this has to give and if so what thanks. >> Thank you so much uh Dr. Grablong for for the the presentation and for uh sharing perhaps more questions than answers at the end in this last slide but that's also part of what the kickoff workshop is about. Um indeed we wanted this to be comprehensive and to bring a lot of issues around the table and it will be our our job at at check our SDS to try to narrow this down over time. Let me now open it up for one last time for questions and comments for our uh panelists or if of course our panelists have additional thoughts and comments as well feel free to raise your hands. Um so I'm looking here around the room but do we have uh anyone online? Uh Jeremy colleagues any hand up any comments here from the the room on the presentations that that we just had perhaps on my side perhaps specifically I mean I know um Karen Cameron and Marian you've done a lot of work on the VNR and the HPF uh process And perhaps specifically on this this issue of transparency not leading to accountability and the BNR being more selfie. Do you have some sort of practical thoughts and maybe this is also something for uh David here who was you know part of the negotiations at the time. I mean you know of course they are government-ledd they are voluntary but how could we sort of you know bring this to the the extra the extra step an extra phase in terms of making this uh closer to an accountability mechanism. Uh I know for instance the European Union which was the first region to do a EU voluntary review um did involve for instance the European and economic social committee. So a group of trade unions, business associations to sort of provide a stakeholder assessment of the assessment lead by the European Commission for instance. So there's things like this. There's there's been some innovations here and there. Um so I'm just wondering for those that have been thinking about this for a while, are there any practical and concrete thoughts about how we could strengthen this specific uh mechanism? And I see David don't know who perhaps raising his hand. So perhaps David first and then others also feel free to add your thoughts. Okay, you're sorry you're on mute David. >> Okay, just ju just just very briefly. I mean Mariana was quite right when she recalled the the very tentative basis on which we agreed the um the follow up and review. The very language itself shows that. But the interesting thing is that in the meantime we could almost have dispensed with the word voluntary. Uh because we have had what at last count about 100 countries have have uh sorry I should have said about 190 countries have come not just once but even twice or three times to give their vi. Uh so it means that I remember very clearly we had to use the word voluntary to reassure many um countries in the global south that they were not going to be held to account by unfair northern standards. But as I say 10 years later uh it's actually there's a far more relaxed atmosphere with the notable exception of of the US. Um so in a way my is absolutely right but I I feel that it's almost an accountability framework now in the sense that countries have relaxed into it. You mentioned gum the um the EU example from several years ago that was a terrific initiative. Un unfortunately I I doubt if we will be politically in a position to have a repeat of that for some time to come because the EU itself as you know has uh has fallen down in its commitment to the STGS. But that was a very very good example of an initiative taken by a group of countries which brought in a whole range of stakeholders and I mean I see that in many as one of the high points of the uh of the last few years in terms of um what we would hope for um uh in ter to to strengthen the um let's call them the accountability arrangements. Uh I do come back to the um the issue of uh creating more flexible and frankly more substantial uh arrangements for the HLBF because I mean I don't want to bang on about the same issue but money is vital. The UN is broke. It needs to have donors. Uh we leave the US to one side but certainly other countries come to mind. Some of them are represented here. uh it needs to have donors who would be willing to inject more funding to allow the HLBF to function properly. That's to say much more time available, much more regular time uh and also the space to allow stakeholders to take part. So that's that's really one one way of strengthening the framework. Um but another is that we recognize the synergies and tradeoffs aspect much more has been well covered in today's discussion. uh but in many ways we we we still need to educate governments about the the traps that they create for themselves, the contradictions. So that should be a feature of the um of the HLPF each time. So it's kind of it's an awareness raising as much as accountability. I mean, it's it would be good to think that governments will come to New York uh to be exposed to um to to to in effect account for their performance in sometimes going the wrong route. Let's let's be perfectly honest, a government will go for the negative tradeoff on occasion. So they need to be told by others that um you if you have gone off the straight and narrow for a year or two by taking one of action then you need to get yourselves back onto the straight and narrow within you know in as short a space as time. I regard that as a a key aspect of accountability the the peer pressure which is applied by other countries. In turn that means having much more generous arrangements made for the HLBF. Incidentally Mariana has done great work on this. over the years. All I'm trying to do is sort of pick a few more obvious points, but there's a lot of detail there which which uh can usefully be be put forward. >> Very much uh David, perhaps Cameron, I saw that you you put something in the chat, so perhaps you want to share your thoughts on this. Uh well just very quickly GM uh you know one one proposal that has been put together on this is establishing a um a peerreview mechanism uh where countries can review each other's performance and provide recommendations and recognize and reward top per top top performers. Um so this could be built into the the VNR process and I think it is actually in other um forums as well. Well, I think the human rights council may have something like this. Um, but yeah, Marian might might know better than me. Um, and you know, I think also, you know, certain agencies also offer this OECD, IA and things like that. They do these incountry uh reviews as well. So I I think you know there could be a peer review type mechanism designed which I think would incentivize um more robust reviews and al also peer exchange and and I think this recognition of top performers could be an additional sort of incentive. >> Thank you. Thank you very much uh Cameron and then Marian please. >> Okay. Thank you. Um actually since you ask for practical recommendations I think a very practical thing would be to rework the secretary general's guidelines for the BNRs. That could be a first step asking member states to move away from isolated goal reporting or indicator reporting to really highlighting these systemic hurdles and also presenting and discussing what could be impactful systemic solutions that they have tried to implement that they have maybe evaluated and they share these actionoriented lessons learned with other member states. And also the guidelines could ask member states more explicitly to integrate scientific evidence into their VNRS work with the data. So this would transform the national reviews into more rigorous and evidenceinformed processes. And then of course after the HLPF after the VNRS have been presented we need definitely more analysis and evaluations of the policy lessons in the VNRS and all the other reviews delivered at the HLPF because you know the work starts with the end of the HLPF. Um for beyond 2030, we could think a bit bigger. Um how to get even more evidence-based policy evaluations based on stronger data with a focus on implementation actions also maybe with reward and correction systems as incentives. So to better incentivize um reporting but the political feasibility of this is is difficult. So I leave it at that. Thank you. >> Thank you very much, Marian. Any final thoughts, comments? And perhaps to the Mr. Kazbani. So we're having issues downloading the video, but what we can do perhaps is to share it after the meeting with the with the participants if works with you. Um if there's no further comments or questions, uh I guess we will close this last uh panel. Uh so thank you very much to all of our speakers. Uh I think um we're well behind schedule. Um it's we've had a very long workshop. So I think we'll keep the wrap-up fairly uh short. I'll give you the the last word Dr. Dr. Sato perhaps on my on my side just to say that well first of all to thank all of you for joining here in the room and also online uh today. Um this is uh this was of course a again a kickoff uh workshop and on purpose we wanted to have uh a broad range of perspective and opinions to be represented um today uh on to discuss this topic of the post2030 indicator and monitoring uh frameworks and we've had a diversity of uh opinions from experts um academics but also practitioners uh as well. Um but we also wanted to make sure and that was important for us at this first workshop to make sure that this is not an initiative that operates in isolation. Um so we wanted to involve experts that are involved in related initiative. This is why it was important to start also of course with representatives and I have Marian still on the screen of the GSDR process. So we had Phoebe and Marian we also Enrio Jovanini from the beyond uh GDP. uh we had fragile here in Cameron that are leading important initiative also on the post2030 agenda because of course what we don't want to do is to duplicate what's being done out there and to complement or to connect also what we're doing in this group with um the rest with other initiatives that are happening uh in different parts of the world. Um so that's uh one thing that I wanted to share in terms of next steps. So I think of course what we'll try to do is to come up with a summary. It will not be an easy an easy task because I think we've discussed a lot of issues and topics today, but we'll come up with a summary in the next couple of weeks. Give us give us perhaps a little bit of time um to summarize all of these discussions. Uh with your permission, we'll also circulate of course the slide. I think it was uh requested by Professor Jubani and others. So we'll also circulate with with participants uh uh the slides um on your side please also because I think there's a lot of papers a lot of uh documents that have been mentioned today. So you would welcome also if all of you can also share with us um Andrew Dr. Dr. Sato and myself also um any specifically relevant uh documents or report that that you think we should take into account uh moving forward. What we will try to do and this is something at SDSN we've been doing throughout the years is also of course at SDSM we have this global network of researchers and institutions mobilize on the SDGs that have quite often actually helped a number of countries with their BNR process and the data and the monitoring. So eventually we will want to do a a survey um to gather to collect empirical uh data uh for uh understanding better the priorities for the post 2030 agenda. So I think this is also part of the next step with uh Jaika ORI to design a survey and we'll go beyond the SDSN network and to connect the views of a wide range of of experts and practitioners involved uh in this. So that this will be part of the the research methods for this uh initiative. It will be complemented by some an analytical work that we will do. The idea over the next two years is also to have a number of more focused discussion [clears throat] on specific uh thematics uh but also perhaps some regional um discussions. Um we've only scratched the surface of the issues for instance in small island developing states. In the last panel we had a number of European uh experts as well that shared some of the experience from um in Europe and perhaps you know more broadly in high income countries as well. So uh that is also part of what we will want to try to do also with with our partners at Jakari is to identify perhaps some uh specific uh themes for future workshops and I think we also welcome of course suggestions uh on your side especially if you are organizing also conference or events uh on those on those issues if we can join join forces and also connect the dots here and perhaps organize specific workshops on the monitoring on on specific issues and things that might be relevant for specific regions as well and we welcome propositions on this. I think I will stop here and leave the last word to to Dr. Sato just to say in terms of um overall timeline. So it's a of course an important year for for the UN there'll be a new UN secretary uh general in in a few weeks and months and then we'll have this SDG summit in 2027 which will kickstart the negotiations for the post 2030 agenda. um on purpose from the start with our partners at check ORI we we designed this uh partnership around a two years collaboration and so for us the idea is that all of those this survey uh these discussions that will happen in the analytical work will feed eventually into a final report and sets of recommendations that will be uh that will be addressed to the UN secretary general and just to give an overall uh an overview of the of the timeline in mind for this. We hope that the final report will be uh ready for the first half of 2028 and perhaps either it could be presented in the context of the HLPF in 2028 or the UN u general assembly on the sidelines of the UNGA uh in 2028. So that's for the overall timeline again major thank you to uh all of you for joining us in person and also online and I'll leave to Dr. Sato the last word for today. Thank you >> pretty much. So uh in this workshop uh we received a very uh rich extensive and uh uh diverse uh inputs and uh um suggestions and uh we we are going to um integrate those um input we received today in our um research work in coming months and years and uh I'd like to thank all the participants and presenters joining here in person and also virtually and u Um we'd like to have uh your inputs, further inputs and insights uh in the future in developing our uh suggestions and proposal for the emerging integrated framework and I think uh uh this workshop today marks a very good start of our collaboration and I echo uh Yong's point that we would like to further expand collaboration with other initiatives which is very important And uh yeah um we are very much looking forward to this collaboration in coming months and uh um I'd like to uh thank the colleagues of SCSN and also S University for co organizing this event. This is a wonderful workshop workshop and uh thank you. Thank you for the all part and colleagues of SCS and S University. Thank you much. Thank you very much.