A special issue of the Global Policy journal has just been released, which focuses on political processes that have shaped goal setting and measuring of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Coordinated by Sakiko Fukuda Parr, this special issue highlights that the choice of using numeric performance indicators as a method for negotiating a consensus vision of development is not a technical issue but rather a political one. The reliance on indicators can distort social norms, frame hegemonic discourses, and reinforce power hierarchies.
The case studies in this issue approach different topics related to the SDGs, such as sustainable agriculture, gender equality, education, inequality, access to justice, data governance, among others. A paper about the SDGs and feminist movement building, by DAWN’s General Co-coordinator, Gita Sen, is also included. These papers show how the open and transparent processes to define SDGs set more transformative and ambitious goals, but at the same time, there were difficulties in defining suitable indicators. In other cases, indicators were even used to reorient or pervert the meaning of the goal.
The papers also highlight how the increasing role of big data and other non‐traditional sources of data is altering data production, dissemination and use, and fundamentally altering the epistemology of information and knowledge. This raises questions about ‘data for whom and for what’ – Sakiko Fukuda Parr and Desmond McNeill point out in the introduction that the fundamental issues concerning the power of data to shape knowledge, the democratic governance of SDG indicators and of knowledge for development overall, are areas of concern.
The authors conclude by saying that the implementation of SDGs should be based on a broad qualitative analysis focused on the goals, not on the indicator framework alone. Civil society must be aware of these processes and should have the possibility to continue scrutinizing the selection of indicators.