Getting to know the sustainable Development Goals and How to

Realizing Goals on CIMSA PROGRAM

The SDGs build upon the success of the 8 Millennium Development Goals
agreed upon in 2000 to halve extreme poverty by 2015 as a midpoint towards
eradicating poverty in all its forms. The MDGs focused on the many dimensions
of extreme poverty, including low incomes, chronic hunger, gender inequality,
lack of schooling, lack of access to health care, and deprivation of clean water
and sanitation, among others. They achieved some great successes, for example
halving the likelihood of a child dying before their fifth birthday (see Box 2). Yet,
many countries did not make sufficient progress, particularly on environmental
sustainability, and it is now widely recognized that additional work is needed to
achieve the ultimate goal of ending extreme poverty in all its forms. Further,
there is consensus that the scope of the MDGs needs to be broadened to reflect
the challenges the world faces today. Around 700 million people still live below
the World Banks poverty line, and billions more suffer deprivations of one form
or another. Many societies have experienced a rise of inequality even as they
have achieved economic progress on average. Moreover, the entire world faces
dire environmental threats of human-induced climate change and the loss of
biodiversity. Poor governance, official corruption, and in dramatic cases overt
conflict, afflict much of the world today.
METHODE

Stakeholder Forum has created a transparent and replicable methodology

or analytical tool to enable relative scores or marks to be assigned to each of the
different targets and goals according to their different significance in different
contexts. The method uses a number of assessors to assign their own
independent scores of the significance of each of the proposed targets in the
implementation context in question, according to three separate criteria. The
three criteria proposed are applicability, implementability, and the
transformational impact (both in the country concerned and for the world as a
whole). The assessors scores are then aggregated and averaged to give an
overall score for each target, and then combined to give an average score for
each goal. The methodology is described in more detail.
The general effect is to give the highest scores to those targets and goals
which are both clearly applicable and implementable in the country in question
and which represent the biggest transformational challenge. Conversely, lower
scores are given to targets and goals which are less applicable or implementable
in a particular country, perhaps because they are already substantially achieved
or are expressed in ways that are less relevant in that country, and to goals that
will not require such a transformation of the domestic economy or behaviour
patterns or will not have such a transformational effect on the impact or footprint
which that country makes on the rest of the world. In principle this kind of
analysis could be used to help analyse the different challenges that will be
involved in planning for implementation of the different SDGs in different

circumstances. Thus in a national context it might be a useful tool to illuminate a

national conversation