June 2017: The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) has created an SDG indicator portal with data from 13 Canadian cities. This data portal seeks to contribute to efforts to track sustainable development and highlights the lessons that can be learned from city-level data analysis.

The global SDG indicator selection process has been led by Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG–SDGs), with approximately 150 well-established and 80 indicators that require further development having been identified for use at the global level. In their brief introducing IISD’s city-level indicator portal, authors Livia Bizikova and László Pintér note that, while the global indicators “provide useful guidance and help facilitate comparability,” they “cannot simply be copied over and used at the city level,” due to the benefits of incorporating existing indicators collected at the city level as well as limited data availability for cities. Nonetheless, the authors emphasize the need to begin measuring and reporting on progress, “if we are serious about implementing the SDGs.”

The city-level indicator portal uses data for 12 SDG indicators from Statistics Canada databases for 13 cities (Halifax, Moncton, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Victoria). The indicators cover issues related to poverty, health, education and employment. Data for a 20-year period are included in the portal, which seeks to contribute to the recognition of the extent and rate of change needed to achieve the 2030 Agenda as well as to assess progress and challenges over the last 20 years.

The brief introducing the portal notes that the data show there is an “overall declining trend in tobacco use among younger people,” but the trend is not universal. Some cities demonstrate challenges in achieving or maintaining progress. IISD will add in additional data for additional cities in the coming months. [IISD’s Canadian city-level indicator portal][Briefing Note: Cities – The engines for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals]