16 September 2016: As part of the recent GODAN (Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition) Summit 2016 , which convened in New York, NY, from 15-16 September 2016, the GODAN Secretariat, with partners including Development Initiatives, Save the Children, Oxfam, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and Open Institute, held a session on the importance of open data in addressing food security and nutrition challenges.

More specifically, the session focused on ensuring effective accountability mechanisms to monitor progress towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger). SDG 2 covers critical aspects of food security and nutrition as well as issues related to sustainable agriculture, genetic resources and investments into agriculture.

This session highlighted the results of work on SDG 2-related accountability undertaken by a multi-stakeholder group led by GODAN, in particular the results of a workshop that took place during the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), in July in New York, NY. The work builds on previous work facilitated by the ONE-Campaign, which provided initial recommendations, many of which are summarised in the recently published paper, titled ‘Towards a data users’ framework to advance Sustainable Development Goal 2.’ by Szabo at al. (2016). The suggested framework consists of a pool of policies and tools to be adapted by governments, civil society, international organizations, and the private sector, and involves creating an enabling policy environment and a tailored data portal.

During the session, the panel provided their feedback on needs and challenges in ensuring the implementation of SDG 2. The panellists were: Karen Fabbri (European Commission), Kiringai Kamau (Center for Agricultural Networking and Information Sharing), Geraldo Martha (Embrapa’s Scientific Cooperation Program in the United States (Embrapa Labex-USA), Alberto Sandoval Uribe (Transversal Think Tank) and Julia Duncan (US Department of State).

The experts stressed the challenge of limited data availability globally and nationally to track progress, which they said is likely to hinder effective accountability mechanisms to track SDG 2 and thus prevent us from reaching this goal. The potential way to address the challenge of accountability and monitoring progress is to create an SDG 2 platform. In addition, it is critical to ensure the availability and relevance of global, national and sub-national-level indicators and data, as decisions are made at different levels. Thus, the information in the platform should also help in prioritizing actions and advocacy in geographical and administrative regions where implementation occurs. Finally, the development of the platform needs to take into account progress at the global level and work with national statistical offices to strengthen their capacity in monitoring the SDGs. [GODAN Summit 2016] [Towards a data users’ framework to advance Sustainable Development Goal 2][IISD Sources]