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Indicators for monitoring sustainable development goals: An application to oceanic development in the EU

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  • Rickels, Wilfried
  • Dovern, Jonas
  • Hoffmann, Julia
  • Quaas, Martin
  • Schmidt, Jörn
  • Visbeck, Martin

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with 169 specific targets could be a step forward in achieving efficient governance and policies for global sustainable development. An essential element will be the global indicator framework for monitoring and assessing progress over and against both the overall goals and the specific targets and to guide policy towards sustainable solutions. In the debate over the current indicator framework, little attention is devoted to conceptual issues. Here, we argue that the inclusion of composite indicators, which can be used to aggregate individual indicators, as complements to the single indicators could support the overall assessment process without necessitating any significant changes to the currently proposed indicator base. While the individual indicators remain the backbone of the indicator framework, serving the purpose for detailed assessment of specific policy measures, the composite indicators allow for an explicit assessment of trade-offs between policies. Our illustrative investigation of the sustainable oceanic development of EU coastal states highlights how much a comprehensive assessment can benefit from the additional inclusion of composite indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Rickels, Wilfried & Dovern, Jonas & Hoffmann, Julia & Quaas, Martin & Schmidt, Jörn & Visbeck, Martin, 2015. "Indicators for monitoring sustainable development goals: An application to oceanic development in the EU," Kiel Working Papers 2019, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:2019
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sustainable Development Goals; Indicator Selection; Composite Indicators; Ocean;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

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