Transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals Includes the SDG Index and Dashboards. Sustainable Development Report 2019

The Sustainable Development Report 2019 presents an updated SDG Index and Dashboards with a refined assessment of countries’ distance to SDG targets. The report has been successfully audited for the first time by the European Commission Joint Research Centre. New indicators have been included, primarily to refine the indicator selection on agriculture, diets, gender equality and freedom of speech. We have also added more metrics for international spillovers, including on fatal work accidents. A new website and data visualization tools are available (http://sustainabledevelopment.report). Once again, Nordic countries – Denmark, Sweden and Finland – top the SDG Index. Yet, even these countries face major challenges in implementing one or several SDGs. No country is on track for achieving all 17 goals with major performance gaps even in the top countries on SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Income and wealth inequalities, as well as gaps in health and education outcomes by population groups also remain important policy challenges in developing and developed countries alike. The Sustainable Development Report 2019 generates seven major findings: 1. High-level political commitment to the SDGs is falling short of historic promises In September 2019, heads-of-states and governments will convene for the first time in person at the UN in New York to review progress on their promises made four years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. Yet, our in-depth analyses show that many have not taken the critical steps to implement the SDGs. Out of 43 countries surveyed on SDG implementation efforts, including all G20 countries and countries with a population greater than 100 million, 33 countries have endorsed the SDGs in official statements since January 1st, 2018. Yet in only 18 of them do central budget documents mention the SDGs. This gap between rhetoric and action must be closed. 2. The SDGs can be operationalized through six SDG Transformations SDG implementation can be organized along the following Transformations: 1. Education, Gender, and Inequality; 2. Health, Wellbeing, and Demography; 3. Energy Decarbonization and Sustainable Industry; 4. Sustainable Food, Land, Water, Oceans; 5. Sustainable Cities and Communities; and 6. Digital Revolution for Sustainable Development. The transformations respect strong interdependencies across the SDGs and can be operationalized by well-defined parts of governments in collaboration with civil society, business, and other stakeholders. They must be underpinned and guided by the principles of Leave No One Behind and Circularity and Decoupling of resource use from human wellbeing. 3. Trends on climate (SDG 13) and biodiversity (SDG 14 and SDG 15) are alarming On average, countries obtain their worst scores on SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). No country obtains a “green rating” (synonym of SDG achieved) on SDG 14 (Life Below Water). Trends on greenhouse gas emissions and, even more so, on threatened species are moving in the wrong direction. These findings are in line with the recent reports from the IPCC and IPBES on climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection, respectively. 4. Sustainable land-use and healthy diets require integrated agriculture, climate and health policy interventions Land use and food production are not meeting people’s needs. Agriculture destroys forests and biodiversity, squanders water and releases one-quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions. In total, 78% of world nations for which data are available obtain a “red rating” (synonym of major SDG challenge) on sustainable nitrogen management; the highest number of “red” rating across all indicators included in the report. At the same time, one-third of food is wasted, 800 million people remain undernourished, 2 billion are deficient in micronutrients, and obesity is on the rise. New indicators on nations’ trophic level and yield gap closure highlight the depth of the challenge. Transformations towards sustainable landuse and food systems are required to balance efficient and resilient agriculture and forestry with biodiversity conservation and restoration as well as healthy diets

Connecting the dots: information visualization and text analysis of the Searchlight Project newsletters

This report is the product of the Pardee Center’s work on the Searchlight:Visualization and Analysis of Trend Data project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Part of a larger effort to analyze and disseminate on-the-ground information about important societal trends as reported in a large number of regional newsletters developed in Asia, Africa and the Americas specifically for the Foundation, the Pardee Center developed sophisticated methods to systematically review, categorize, analyze, visualize, and draw conclusions from the information in the newsletters.The Rockefeller Foundatio

International Women's Reproductive Health Strategy

A committment to assuring that FPRH services are available for all is one of foundation's most enduring philanthropic commitments. It began with Bill Hewlett's early recognition that rapid population growth threatens the well-being of people across the globe. The Foundation's subsequent investments have contributed to the field for three decades

Needs assessment to strengthen capacity in water and sanitation research in Africa:experiences of the African SNOWS consortium

Despite its contribution to global disease burden, diarrhoeal disease is still a relatively neglected area for research funding, especially in low-income country settings. The SNOWS consortium (Scientists Networked for Outcomes from Water and Sanitation) is funded by the Wellcome Trust under an initiative to build the necessary research skills in Africa. This paper focuses on the research training needs of the consortium as identified during the first three years of the project

TIGER Capacity Building Facility - Phase 1, lessons learnt

The TIGER Capacity Building Facility focused on closing the technological gap between the users and the earth observation community within the TIGER programme. Thirteen projects participated in different aspects of the capacity building facility: 1. - Basic education, provided via distance learning. 2. - Tailored short courses, selected according to the research interest and technical background of the participants. 3. - Research topic oriented supervision, provided by specialists of the research fields of the participants. 4. - Advanced short courses focusing on selected earth observation techniques. Distance education turned to be efficient and cost effective in the programme - but only for those, who followed the courses completely. There was a relatively large percentage that could not complete the studies. The second and the third type of education were carried out in ITC, in the Netherlands. The participants evaluated the courses and the supervision very effective and adequate. Nevertheless, the follow-up was not always possible. Two advanced short courses were held in Africa (Cape Town and Nairobi). One of them addressed the 'scientific elite' of the EO community, whilst the second focused on the users of this technology

Use of collective expertise as a tool to reinforce food safety management in Africa

The Erasmus+ project (2017-2020) entitled Societal Challenges and Governance of African Universities: the case of ALIments in Morocco, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Senegal (DAfrAli) seeks to strengthen the governance capacity of African Higher Education Institutions to mobilize their resources in order to respond to major societal challenges in relation to external stakeholders. A work package consisted of organizing three workshops to use Collective Expertise as a tool for the identification of societal risks, in the area of food safety. These three workshops were conducted in Morocco, in Senegal and in Democratic Republic of Congo. The exercise was performed by country academics with the contribution of the European project partners. Collective Expertise gave results that demonstrated that, with a careful and diversified selection of experts, this methodology can have a deep importance to list the food hazards in a country. The results obtained can induce changes in university curricula, showed the social impacts of food safety, unveiled research needs and training needs for different agents in the food sector and above all the impact in food policy in a country. The collective expertise approach of the determination of hazards also permitted to discuss possible organization models for food risk management in the 3 countries