Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Framework for Nationalisation and Regionalisation of Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals

Attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) continues their considerable past achievements and constantly reviews their progress. However, a systematic and evaluative framework for monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of the SDGs has not been observed in ASEAN. This study, thus, develops a regional framework for MRV to set a clear direction and streamline the process of MRV in order to achieve the SDGs within a given timeframe. As there are a number of indicators and targets under each SDG, one general caveat of SDGs is that it is not operational and difficult to thoroughly monitor the development progress. Thus, to monitor and report the progress of regional SDG achievement, national indicators should be systematically synthesised into compact and comprehensible evaluative conclusions. Based on a completed dataset of SDG status compiled under the regional framework, in each evaluation period, current status of SDG achievement is compared with that of expected status in order to evaluate the current progress whether it is highly satisfactory, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the outcome of the monitoring and reporting process would be goal-level, area-level, country-level, and region-level evaluative conclusions. These single evaluative conclusions help a responsible party to monitor effectively and efficiently, and to report the progress of sustainable development at the national and regional levels.