An official statistician reading the proposal of the Open Working Group (OWG) for Sustainable Development Goals might have two simultaneous reactions: doubt and excitement. The proposal that the UN General Assembly’s 30-member OWG forwarded to the Assembly on 19 July 2014 contains 17 goals with 169 targets covering a broad range of sustainable development issues, including ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests. The demand for data to monitoring these goals and targets far exceeds the existing capacity of national statistical systems in Asia and the Pacific. At the same time, the emphasis on the importance of data also presents opportunities for transformative changes to strengthen monitoring and accountability for better development results.
07 November 2014
07 November 2014
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