12 July 2018: Participants at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) discussed ways to assess and track the interlinkages among the 17 SDGs and 169 targets during a side event titled, ‘Managing Interactions between SDGs for Transformation.’

The event was organized by the International Council for Science (ICS). Ruben Zondervan, Executive Director, Stakeholder Forum, moderated the event.

Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Deputy Director General/Deputy Chief Executive Officer, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), emphasized the need to understand the relationships, as well as the evolving relationships, among SDGs as policy community moves towards 2030. He called attention to ‘The World in 2050’ (TWI2050) initiative, which just launched its first report exploring transformational pathways to attain the SDGs. He said the report identifies six areas for major transformations which, if achieved, would be sufficient for reaching the SDGs. These include: human capacity and education; consumption and production patterns; decarbonization and energy; food, biosphere and water; smart cities; and digital revolution.

Peter Messerli, Switzerland, who serves as co-chair for the Independent Group of Scientists preparing the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), described different approaches that could be pursued to examine interactions among the SDGs. These included conducting new research, meta-analyses, and expert assessments on the interactions, or beginning with the SDG indicators and conducting correlations, time series evaluations and other assessments of national data sets. He said the Independent Group of Scientists began with the existing body of knowledge on SDG interactions, looking at assessments of assessments and scientific papers with explicit references to SDGs, among other sources. Based on this research, he said the current state of knowledge is relatively limited and there is a need for a platform that collects knowledge about SDG interactions and synthesizes it for different policy spheres.

Joseph Alcamo, University of Sussex, noted the importance of scale in dealing with SDG interactions. He suggested embedding the SDGs into trade agreements, and said there is a need for an international initiative to identify and prioritize SDG synergies that have the greatest positive impacts. He proposed an initial focus on scaling up things that should be done anyway, such as replacing indoor cook stoves, which will address energy and health issues in the Goals.

Karina Barquet, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), discussed the seven-point scale that SEI has developed to assess SDG interactions. She highlighted that it permits a more nuanced understanding of the interactions between the Goals and said the assessment technique has been used in participatory stakeholder sessions at the national level and can be used to assess targets, sector specific goals and national planning.

Reginald Vachon, Scientific and Technological Major Group and a representative of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations, noted the need to examine rural, urban and peri-urban interactions. He emphasized the role of partnerships for each SDG.

A representative of the Government of Mongolia discussed her government’s experience with testing the interactions methods approach described by Barquet. She said that participants’ perspectives coming into the experience were siloed, and the experience provided capacity building as well as a process to identify Mongolia’s long-term objectives.

During the discussion, participants underscored the need to balance the knowledge and expertise of ministries, which are traditionally siloed, and to develop mechanisms that can help bridge institutions. One speaker said government agencies will be motivated to work across silos when they see there is funding available to do this, and he said case studies could be used to demonstrate how interactions work. Another speaker suggested that cities should be invited to tell HLPF about their experiences. [SDG Knowledge Hub Sources] [SDG Knowledge Hub coverage of HLPF 2018] [SDG Knowledge Hub summary of update on GSDR]