30 June 2015: UN Member States and civil society discussed challenges and insights in the national implementation of the post-2015 development agenda, at a side event co-hosted by the Permanent Mission of Denmark, the Permanent Mission of Mexico, Save the Children, and the UN Foundation, during the third session of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

‘Implementing the Post-2015 Agenda: What Will It Take at the Country Level?’ took place on 30 June 2015, in New York, US, and was moderated by Minh-Thu Pham, UN Foundation.

Debra Jones, Save the Children, called for: keeping people at the center of the post-2015 development agenda, particularly children; building “networks of excellence” that can help with implementation; and positioning the HLPF in 2017 as the “Delivery Summit.”

Carlos Morales, Permanent Mission of Colombia, noted his Government’s efforts to align its national development plan and targets with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He underlined the need for a communication strategy, in order to involve all people in implementing the SDGs, and stressed the importance of technology transfer for capacity building.

Felix Addo-Yobo, Ghana’s National Development Planning Commission, said Ghana has created a high-level, inter-ministerial committee to supervise the SDGs’ implementation and a platform to involve NGOs and foundations in supporting implementation, enabling people interested in specific areas to work together. He stressed that Ghana is not yet capable of collecting data on non-traditional areas of measurement, such as those related to the proposed SDG 16 on peaceful and inclusive societies.

Glauco Seoane, Permanent Mission of Peru, said his country’s inter-ministerial coordination established during the Open Working Group (OWG) on the SDGs will be formalized into an institutionalized body to follow up on implementation of the post-2015 development agenda. He added that Peru’s National Statistical Office (NSO) has identified indicators for all proposed SDG targets, with two indicators per target. He highlighted the challenge of developing indicators for SDGs 16 and 17 (means of implementation and the global partnership) as well as for environmental aspects, underlining that international cooperation will be important for developing those indicators.

Anthony Pipa, US Special Coordinator for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, said the US Government, including the White House Domestic Policy Council, has worked to identify what the post-2015 development agenda can offer to the US at the national level, such as universal early childhood education or universal access to community college. He spoke about data as “development capital,” and called for scaling up partnerships to utilize data from social media, mobile data, or civil society, and to use it transparently but with respect for privacy.

Sara Luna Camacho, Permanent Mission of Mexico, stressed the need for capacity building at the national level. She indicated that: Mexico created a special committee to implement the SDGs, supported by its NSO; and Mexico is one of two countries in the world to have developed a robust set of indicators to measure rule of law, comprised of 60 indicators. She said Mexico is trying to create a global multi-stakeholder initiative to facilitate access to data and enhance collaboration on the implementation of the SDG’s 169 targets.

Ib Petersen, Permanent Representative of Denmark, said his country currently cannot measure all of the 169 targets, and they are working to identify areas of competence and where they could use data collected for other purposes.

Macharia Kamau, Permanent Representative of Kenya, said most countries are already implementing the 17 SDGs in some way, if not in a very organized manner. Bringing all ministries and departments to work together will make the post-2015 development agenda “truly transformative,” he said. On reaching all groups, he said this is very challenging, and Member States will need to define it very clearly. Kamau also noted the need for “indicative commitments” at national level, especially on energy, sustainable consumption and production (SCP), and inequalities, to help with standardization and ensure governments can “compare notes.” Finally, he said it will be a “Big Bang moment” when the abundant data available is brought together in a coherent way.

Debapriya Bhattacharya, Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), stressed the need to: integrate global public goods into assessing the SDGs; synchronize global deliverability with national implementation; and find ways of plugging in other sources of administrative data in the NSOs, “the backbone of implementation at the national level.” He also underscored the importance of making data usable, noting that “availability is not the same with accessibility and accessibility with usability.”

In the discussion that followed, the UK stressed the need to “measure what we treasure,” inviting participants not to limit themselves to what they can measure now, and highlighted the need to keep up momentum across the political spectrum over the next 15 years. Costa Rica said it has promulgated a law for all political parties to agree upon, in order to establish a long-term implementation strategy that will span different administrations.

HLPF 2015 is convening on 26 June-8 July 2015, in New York, US. [IISD RS Sources] [IISD RS Coverage of HLPF 2015]