The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap
Introducing the SDGs Geospatial Roadmap, a resource to communicate, guide and enhance the awareness of geospatial information for the SDGs
Executive Summary
2020 was intended to be a milestone for global sustainable development. Twenty years from the inception of the Millennium Development Goals and five years into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), regardless of the present global situation, the transformational vision and new data requirements called for to realise the 2030 Agenda have not been fully realised. The extent of this challenge has been underestimated. It is further amplified by gaps and unequal distribution of the foundational geospatial data, leadership, knowledge, and innovation which all countries need.
This SDGs Geospatial Roadmap has been collaboratively developed as a strategic information and communications mechanism to ‘build the bridge’ and understanding between the statistical and geospatial actors working within the global indicator framework. The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap provides simple and actionable guidance to the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators’ (IAEG-SDGs), SDGs Custodian Agencies and National Statistical Offices, National Geospatial Information Agencies and others working within the national SDG ecosystem. Implementing the SDGs Geospatial Roadmap will help guide national institutions to collaborate and realise the immense innovative potential that geospatial information and its associated technologies can bring to the SDGs, and other global development agendas such as Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the response to COVID-19, and broader national priorities.
The vision of the SDG Geospatial Roadmap is to see geospatial and location-based information being recognised and accepted as official data for the SDGs and their global indicators. This vision expands on the recommendation of the IAEG-SDGs’ Working Group on Geospatial Information (WGGI) that, while official statistics are the foundation on which the SDGs are built, the SDGs cannot be fully realised using official statistics alone, particularly when they are not produced in sufficient quality, detail and frequency. In fact, the SDGs are highly dependent on the understanding of geographic location, necessitating the inclusion and use of geospatial information, Earth observations and other forms of location-based data.
Therefore, the SDGs Geospatial Roadmap is a living resource that helps communicate, guide and enhance the awareness of geospatial information, Earth observations, and related data sources, tools and methods, to inform and support the implementation, measurement and monitoring of the SDGs, according to national circumstances. It achieves this through three phases that detail how and why geospatial information is needed and how it can be applied to support countries in their national implementations of the SDGs. In highlighting available resources, existing global geospatial frameworks and novel, innovative approaches, the SDGs Geospatial Roadmap is supported by a series of Key Actions, Case Studies and supporting guidance for each phase that recommend the unique value proposition and opportunity that geospatial information can and does provide, and identifies what needs to be done, when, why, and by whom.
Introduction
In July 2017, in its resolution 71/313, the General Assembly adopted the Global Indicator Framework for the 17 SDGs and 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as developed by the IAEG-SDGs. The Statistical Commission agreed upon the Global Indicator Framework at its forty-eighth session, held in March 2017. The resolution stressed that official statistics and data from national statistical systems constitute the basis needed for the Global Indicator Framework and recommended that national statistical systems explore ways to integrate new data sources into their systems to satisfy new data needs of the 2030 Agenda.
The requirements of the 2030 Agenda imply that the SDG indicators should be disaggregated, where possible, by income, sex, age, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location, or other characteristics, following the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.
Yet, we have not achieved the transformation progress needed to attain the SDGs. Further, the reporting requirements of the 2030 Agenda add an extra layer of work to National Statistical Offices (NSOs), at a time when many are already facing ever higher pressures caused by national and global reporting frameworks and the recovery from COVID-19. Moreover, while official statistics are the foundation on which the SDGs are built, the SDGs cannot be fully realised using official statistics alone. The SDGs are highly dependent on geospatial information and Earth Observations (EO) as the primary data for relating people, economy and the environment to a location and place, and to measure ‘where’ progress is, or is not being made, particularly at ‘disaggregated’ sub-national and local levels. The Working Group on Geospatial Information (WGGI) of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group of the SDGs indicators was established to directly support and complement the ongoing work of the IAEG-SDGs and the implementation of the Global Indicator Framework, where the geospatial data acquisition, integration and statistical disaggregation is most needed.
The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap aims to communicate the value of the support already provided to the IAEG-SDGs, UN custodian agencies, and Member States, provides practical guidance for the use of geospatial information for the production, measurement, and monitoring, and elaborates on the vision to see geospatial and location-based information being recognised and accepted as official data for the SDGs and their global indicators, providing practical guidance which enables the mainstreaming of the SDGs at any level of development. It achieves this by demonstrating how to ‘build the bridge’ between the statistical and geospatial actors working within the Global Indicator Framework, through three phases:
The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap is addressed to NSOs and national actors primarily responsible for providing the underlying data for the SDGs. This ecosystem can include the National Geospatial Information Agency (NGIA), the national (or regional) space agency, custodian agencies of the United Nations System and other stakeholders within the broader data community. Significantly, innovations within the geospatial information and EO communities, and their enabling technologies, can be leveraged and shared to help countries transform how they produce, measure and monitor SDG indicators.
This Roadmap was collaboratively developed by the WGGI, following a broad process of qualitative consultation with NSOs and NGIAs representatives of both the IAEG-SDGs and WGGI. Many of the challenges recognised in the Roadmap do not have an obvious and immediate solution, particularly in the area of governance. The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap aims to be an interactive living resource, which invites the statistical, data and geospatial information communities to contribute with new resources, services and examples of best practices, as they emerge, which will be added to the Roadmap’s web document as an expanded version of this present document.
How to Use the SDGs Geospatial Roadmap
The SDGs Geospatial Roadmap draws on case studies and national examples, specific resources and tools, and highlights further considerations for geospatial information to address our global challenges. The three Phases are structured by an introduction, Key Actions and a Summary.
The Key Actions provide simple actions and resources that can establish/strengthen national capacity in using geospatial information for the SDGs. They are also intended to be milestones for ‘checking in’ on progress. Each Key Action gives the following details:
Depending on the status of your country, some of the resources will already be assimilated, others will be appropriate in the present, and others could be considered useful for future phases.
The rapid pace of innovation within the global geospatial information community means that the data we have today, in terms of quality, resolution and other attributes, will be better tomorrow. Accordingly, the Roadmap can be used as a tool to help countries identify what they need to start to use geospatial information, or for strengthening existing capacities, in their view of future innovations. Regardless of whether a country is challenged through sustaining skills and knowledge or is pushing the technological frontier, this Roadmap aims to provide an equal level of guidance to strengthen the use of geospatial information for the SDGs. In alignment with the three main areas of influence of the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF), the Roadmap contextualises along the interconnected areas of influence: Governance, Technology, and People.
The Roadmap Navigator identifies the relationships between the Key Actions and the IGIF’s areas of influence to help support the implementation of Key Actions:
