MONITORING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

The 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take bold and transformative decisions to put an end to extreme poverty, inequality and address environmental challenges by 2030. There are 17 sustainable development goals, 169 targets and 244 indicators, which are used to track overall progress, identify gaps and provide evidence for policy and action. The environment underlies each one of the global goals, demonstrating how the interdependency between humans and nature is at the core of sustainable development. As the world’s leading authority on environment, UNEP plays a key role in supporting progress for achieving the goals and is the custodian for 26 indicators.

Central Asian countries actively pursue the 2030 agenda, and have set up comprehensive frameworks for SDG monitoring and reporting. Details of these frameworks and national processes are discussed below, while the figure illustrates the overall state of development of those national SDG indicators in Central Asian countries which fully or partially match indicators from the UNECE environmental set. Gaps in the figure indicate where environmental indicators from the UNECE set, once fully developed in the countries, will be able to provide additional opportunities for monitoring environmental progress towards SDGs.