Awareness Raising/Training Workshop on SDG Indicators under FAO Custodianship (Equatorial Guinea)

On 25 September 2015, the 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 aspirational objectives to guide actions of governments, international agencies, civil society and other institutions over the next 15 years (2016-2030). The SDGs aim at ending poverty and hunger while restoring and sustainably managing natural resources, integrating the three dimensions of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental.

In parallel to the work on Sustainable Development Goals and targets, as early as in March 2015, UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) established the Interagency and Expert Group on SDG indicators (IAEG-SDG) with the responsibility of leading the process of development of the indicators for monitoring SDGs. The latest, 10th meeting of the Group took place in October 2019. At present there are 232 unique global indicators to monitor the 169 targets of the SDGs.

SDG indicators have been classified into three tiers based on their level of methodological development and data availability at global level:

• Tier I – Indicator is conceptually clear, has an internationally established methodology and data regularly produced by countries for at least 50 per cent of countries and of the population in every region where the indicator is relevant.
  
• Tier II - Indicator is conceptually clear, has an internationally established methodology and standards are available, but data are not regularly produced by countries.
  
• Tier III – No internationally established methodology or standards are yet available for the indicator but methodology/standards are being (or will be) developed or tested.

For each indicator, IAEG-SDG has identified a custodian agency which is responsible for: methodological development of the indicator, providing and updating the indicator documentation; collecting data from national sources, ensuring their comparability and consistency, compiling regional and global aggregates, and disseminating data at global level; statistical capacity development of countries to generate and disseminate national data; contributing to monitoring progress at the global, regional and national levels.

FAO is the custodian agency for 21 SDG indicators (for targets in Goals 2, 5, 6, 12, 14 and 15) and a partner agency for 5 more indicators (for targets in Goals 1, 14 and 15).

Guinea Equatorial, as many other countries of the region, has started the nationalization process of SDG indicators. In 2018, the Ministry of Economy, Finance and Planning, with the support of UNDP, released the Baseline Report for the SDGs in Guinea Equatorial, which provided an initial mapping of each SDG indicator’s relevance, availability, baseline value and source. However, this mapping did not always benefit from full consultation with the respective custodian agency, and therefore may need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Also, the mapping did not go as far as to identify the corresponding institution at national level that should assume responsibility for producing each indicator, which is an important handicap for moving forward with SDG reporting. According to the latest information sent to FAO by the National Statistical Office of the country, a national committee responsible for the coordination of SDG implementation and reporting has not yet been established in the country, nor a national focal point for SDG indicators appointed.

In addition, there are still several challenges, in particular the fact that for many of indicators, their situation has changed over the past two years, mainly in terms of their methodology being in the Tier III category previously, but subsequently being approved by the IAEG-SDG. This means that the data source and responsible entity identified may need to be reconsidered to comply with the finally approved methodology.

The current workshop aims to address all these challenge, principally by increasing the awareness of all relevant stakeholders about the methodology of the indicators under FAO custodianship and the most suitable data sources, update the Baseline Report mapping for these indicators, and support the SDG indicators coordination process at the country level by helping identify the appropriate institution and national focal point responsible for each indicator.

Target audience

The target audience of the workshop will be the stakeholders involved in the nationalization process of SDG indictors and the future production of the 21 indicators under FAO custodianship. In particular, these will include the representatives of the following institutions: Agencia Nacional Horizonte 2020, Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas de Guinea Ecuatorial, Ministerio de Agricultura y Bosques, Ministerio de Hacienda, Economía y Planificación, Ministerio de Asuntos Sociales e Igualdad de Género, Ministerio de Pescas y Medio Ambiente

Objective

The objective of this workshop is to assist the target audience in better understanding of SDG indicators under FAO custodianship. In particular, after the workshop the target audience is supposed to have a clear understanding of:

• FAO’s role on SDG monitoring and implementation at regional and national level.
• Methodology of each of 21 indicators under FAO custodianship
• Data needs for producing the indicators and steps to be undertaken by the country to be able to satisfy these data needs
• Procedures of producing these indicators and interactions with FAO during these procedures