Blog: “Exploring an Indicator Framework for the Post-2030 International Development Goals that will Follow the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”

At the JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development (JICA Ogata Research Institute), researchers with a wide range of experience and backgrounds forge partnerships with diverse stakeholders to undertake work on important projects. We will share their knowledge and perspectives gained from their research activities in this blog post series. Sato Ichiro, executive senior research fellow, who is part of the research project “Study on the Indicator Framework for Post-2030 International Development Goals” by the JICA Ogata Research Institute, writes this blog post to share his insights.

Author:
Sato Ichiro, executive senior research fellow, JICA Ogata Research Institute

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda), which sets out the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was adopted at the United Nations (UN) in 2015. 2025 will mark its tenth anniversary. We have a little over five years until 2030, the year the SDGs are to be met, but will we be able to meet these 17 goals in time? According to The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024, released by the UN in June 2024, the progress of the SDGs has faced many issues. Not only are a significant number of targets under the SDGs showing insufficient progress toward achievement, some are even showing a reversal of progress. How to accelerate efforts by each country and international cooperation to achieve the SDGs is a pressing issue. In fact, this issue is expected to be discussed at the Summit of the Future, to be held by the UN this September. The report points out that in addition to serious delays in progress, even though it has been nearly a decade since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, data to measure the degree of achievement are still insufficient and are unable to be obtained in a timely manner.

There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets and to measure the progress of each of these targets, the SDG indicator framework sets out 231 indicators. Some of these are tied to multiple targets, so when such duplications are counted as separate indicators they add up to 248 in total. These indicators draw less attention compared to the goals and targets but are actually very important. How far on the journey toward achieving the set goals and targets have member states and our world reached and how much effort is still required to complete that journey? Are we moving toward or away from the goals and targets? Answers to such questions can be found based on the indicator data. Furthermore, based on our understanding of the progress so far and the current standings derived from indicator data, measures to be taken from here need be considered.

What is more, the indicators sometimes practically define the contents of the targets. For the SDGs, the goals and targets were first negotiated and agreed, and then discussions on the indicators to measure each target followed. Therefore, the indicators were set only to measure targets that were already defined and were not expected to affect their contents. However, when the definition of a target is broad or vague, its content may essentially only be defined by its indicators (Kim 2023). One example is, “Target 5.b: enhance the use of enabling technologies, in particular ICT, to promote women’s empowerment,” set under “Goal 5: Gender equality.” The only indicator set under this target is Indicator 5.b.1, which looks at the percentage of mobile phone ownership disaggregated by gender. Although it is obvious that it is not realistic to measure how well technology is being used to promote women’s empowerment just by level of mobile phone ownership, when this becomes the only indicator, all attention goes there. Policies to increase women’s mobile phone ownership may be implemented, while attention toward other important aspects may be lost, possibly causing the growth in the percentage of women’s mobile phone ownership to essentially be perceived as the only relevant target. Thus, the indicators, which may seem mundane and relevant only to a limited number of experts, are in fact crucial.

JICA Ogata Research Institute is working on the research project “Study on the Indicator Framework for Post-2030 International Development Goals.” In this project, the challenges now seen in the existing indicator framework of the SDGs are being analyzed. Based on the results, we will attempt to propose what a new indicator framework could look like if intended for the new international development goals that should be set after 2030, the target year of the SDGs. The outline of this project will be shared in this blog post, but first an overview of the challenges seen in the existing indicator framework of the SDGs is presented in the next section.

Many challenges relating to the SDG indicators have been pointed out to date. The first is that there are too many indicators. As already explained, there are 231 indicators excluding duplicates. However, some indicators have multiple sub-indicators set within them, and/or data needs to be disaggregated based on categories like gender, age group and area classification (e.g., urban or rural), upon submission. When these are added up, more than 1,000 types of indicator data are required. On top of this, data submission is not a one-off event. Data for the same indicators must be submitted periodically although submission frequency depends on each indicator. Of the roughly 200 UN member states, not a single one has been able to submit all the requested data to date. Data sufficiency is extremely low for many indicators (Dang and Serajuddin 2020). The burden of data collection is heavy especially for developing countries where government resources are limited. Some researchers estimate that if low- and middle-income countries try to get data for all SDG indicators in place, the total cost by 2030 could amount to 45 billion USD (Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data 2016). Moreover, issues in accuracy, reliability and comparability have been noted with data that have already been submitted (Biggeri et al. 2019).

Meanwhile, some researchers are making a seemingly contradictory argument, saying that there are not enough indicators in the current framework. For some of the SDGs, multiple different elements or broad topics are covered by a single target. Yet, as explained earlier, there are also a considerable number of targets with indicators that look at only limited aspects of each one. The story behind this is that when the SDG indicators were being discussed it seems like there was political pressure to restrict the number of indicators (MacFeely 2020). Some academics have therefore proposed increases in the number of SDG indicators and an expansion of their framework so that all important aspects of the targets can be captured (Kim 2023).

In light of such seemingly contradicting views—to increase or decrease the number of indicators—how should the indicator framework for the post-2030 international development goals be improved?

In the ongoing study by the JICA Ogata Research Institute we are working on a few recommendations. These are being made based on the existing SDG indicator framework but are intended for the post-2030 international development goals.

The first recommendation is to categorize the global indicators into two groups: core indicators, for which all member states should submit data on a regular basis; and optional indicators, which are all other global indicators. For the core indicators, it is recommended that submitted data are checked by the international organizations in charge of the indicators in question. Moreover, international support to countries with limited statistical capacity should be reinforced and concentrated on data collection and management of the core indicators. This is to ensure that the data submitted are developed and managed following the same definitions and methods to make them comparable between different member states. Considering the burden of data collection for member states and the scale of available international support to increase statistical capacity, a realistic size of the core indicators would be around 50 or less. We further suggest that collection of other non-core global indicator data be optional and be selectively applied based on the development strategies and monitoring needs of each member state. As they are optional, their number does not have to be limited but should be sufficient to include enough indicators to cover the various aspects of the goals and targets.

In the study, a trial set of core indicators will be considered based on the current SDG indicators. First, indicators with globally established definitions and data management methods for which data have already been submitted by many member states will be selected from the current SDG indicators, and then these will be further narrowed down by analyzing correlations between them. Previous studies (such as Shuai et al. 2021) have pointed out that the number of indicators can be reduced by taking advantage of the correlation between indicators and our study follows this approach. As the prototype of the core indicators identified with the above method may not be well balanced or lack indicators to capture some important aspects, the complementary addition and replacement of indicators will also be considered. For instance, some recent issues such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and measures against pandemics were not seen as significant when the 2030 Agenda was adopted in 2015 but have become important since then. Indicators relevant to such emerging issues may be considered for addition.

The second recommendation is to further facilitate setting local targets and indicators by countries and subnational regions. This is not something new and is in fact contemplated in the current SDG framework. Paragraph 75 of Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which was adopted at the UN in 2015 and included the SDGs, says that “(t)he Goals and targets will be followed up and reviewed using a set of global indicators. These will be complemented by indicators at the regional and national levels that will be developed by Member States, in addition to the outcomes of work undertaken for the development of the baselines for those targets where national and global baseline data does not yet exist” (note though, that the term “regional” here may refer to supranational regions rather than subnational regions). However, in reality, there are not many countries or subnational regions that set their own local indicators that are distinct from the global indicators of the SDGs, although some global indicators may not be meaningful in the unique local context of countries and regions. We believe in the merit of setting local indicators aligned with development priorities and local contexts.

We consider demonstrating the significance of setting local indicators as well as how to develop them, referring to actual cases. As Japan has relatively abundant cases of local SDG indicators set by local authorities, we will start from reviewing such cases in Japan, and then extend to other countries for extracting useful experience and lessons, and presenting synthesized knowledge.

As an example of local indicators set by a Japanese municipality let us look at the case of Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. The city of Kanazawa selected 45 local indicators and a corresponding data list to measure the progress of the Kanazawa Future Visions (Kanazawa SDGs Action Plan). Comments from the public were taken into account during this process. One example is the indicator, “Preserve and pass on the culture and scenery”, which is unique to Kanazawa, a historical city with traditional streetscapes. Relevant data listed under this indicator include the “percentage of residents who feel that opportunities to experience the history and culture are near at hand” and the “number of registered Kanazawa machiya (traditional townhouses with architectural significance that are unique to Kanazawa).”

In a few years’ time discussions on post-2030 international development goals will ramp up. We plan to release interim research outcomes in FY 2024 and FY 2025 to contribute to international discussions on this subject.


Disclaimer: All opinions expressed in this blog post are the author’s and do not reflect opinions of JICA or the JICA Ogata Research Institute.

Biggeri, Mario, David A. Clark, Andrea Ferrannini, and Vincenzo Mauro. 2019. “Tracking the SDGs in an ‘Integrated’ Manner: A Proposal for a New Index to Capture Synergies and Trade-Offs between and within Goals.” World Development 122 (October): 628–47.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.05.022.

Dang, Hai-Anh H., and Umar Serajuddin. 2020. “Tracking the Sustainable Development Goals: Emerging Measurement Challenges and Further Reflections.” World Development 127 (March):104570.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.05.024.

Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. 2016. “The State of Development Data Funding 2016.”
https://opendatawatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/development-data-funding-2016.pdf.

Kim, Rakhyun E. 2023. “Augment the SDG Indicator Framework.” Environmental Science & Policy 142 (April): 62–67.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2023.02.004.

MacFeely, Steve. 2020. “Measuring the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators: An Unprecedented Statistical Challenge.” Journal of Official Statistics 36 (2): 361–78. https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2020-0019.

Shuai, Chenyang, Long Yu, Xi Chen, Bu Zhao, Shen Qu, Ji Zhu, Jianguo Liu, Shelie A. Miller, and Ming Xu. 2021. “Principal Indicators to Monitor Sustainable Development Goals.” Environmental Research Letters 16(12): 124015. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3697.

Sato Ichiro
Sato is an executive senior research fellow at the JICA Ogata Research Institute since 2022. He joined Japan International Cooperation Agency in 1997 and has worked at its Mexico Office, Brazil Office, Disaster Risk Reduction Group, and the Office for Climate Change. He was seconded to the World Resources Institute from 2018 to 2020.