SDG indicators under FAO custodianship: What’s new?
Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, FAO has produced a wealth of materials aimed at promoting knowledge and understanding related to the SDG Indicators under FAO custodianship.
As the custodian organization for 21 SDG indicators and a contributing agency to another five indicators, spanning SDGs 2, 5, 6, 12, 14, and 15, the Organization is investing in strengthening the capacities of Member countries to collect data and monitor the 21 SDG indicators and their methodologies.
In this context, the Organization has just launched a completely revamped SDG-Indicators Portal to better assist users in finding information on SDG indicators. The new version offers a multilingual interface and is continuously updated with new data visualizations, background information, progress reports, methodologies, capacity development events and e-learning courses.
It is now taking a step forward by also including, for the first time, a series of 111 country profiles on SDG reporting, resulting from a Statistical Capacity Assessment conducted by the Office of the Chief Statistician in 2019.
Some of the key findings are summarized below:
- Most of the countries seem to have established the required mechanisms for coordinating the SDG reporting and monitoring. However, many countries were not able to identify an SDG-specific national focal point for most of the indicators under FAO custodianship. The discrepancy between the data available in Global UN SDG Database and the information reported by the countries point to flaws in such coordination mechanisms and the information being shared among agencies at the national level and with international custodian agencies.
- The majority of countries do not regularly conduct the key data collection operations that collect the information necessary for the compilation of FAO-relevant indicators, such as nutrition and multipurpose household surveys, forest inventories, and water supply and use assessment. Moreover, the data collection activities which have not been carried out recently are not fully planned to be carried out in near future. This puts a continuing pressure on the compilation of the SDG indicators which are heavily relying on such data collection vehicles.
- Finally, out of the 111 countries that responded to the survey, 75% reported that they will require some form of assistance to produce at least one of the SDG indicators under FAO custodianship.
The results will assist FAO and decentralized offices in designing targeted interventions and mobilizing resources to support countries in collecting, analyzing and using the SDG indicators in decision-making. The resources can be accessible from the SDG-Indicators Portal in three UN languages (English, French and Spanish).
Save the date:
"Statistical Capacity Assessment for the FAO-SDG Indicators Webinar" | Monday, 16 December 2019 (10:30-11:30), Iraq room (A-235).
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