Building on its expertise, UNEP has developed monitoring methodologies for all 25 SDG indicators under its custodianship. These methodologies have been endorsed through the formal SDG Member State process as the official monitoring methodologies for member states. UNEP ensured that all the methods developed align with existing statistical standards and frameworks, including the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES) and the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA). UNEP has worked to ensure that gender is properly considered in all environment-related SDG indicators.
This process has led to successful SDG monitoring such as UNEP’s collaborations with Google, NASA and the EU Joint Research Centre’s to do remote sensing on water-related ecosystems (SDG 6.6.1). UNEP also has a partnership with the global citizen science community working toward bringing citizen science into measuring beach litter (SDG 14.1.1b). Now that methodologies are in place, UNEP is scaling-up its actions to improve national SDG monitoring and use of data for regional and global analysis and policy making.
UNEP directly provides the data and analysis for the High-Level Political Forum report on the SDGs and for the global SDG database, as well as for the annual UN Sustainable Development Report and other analytical products.
UNEP also plays a key role in promoting environmental analysis in the SDGs. This includes through publications such as Measuring Progress which allows us to better understand how to achieve the environmental dimension of sustainable development.
As part of UNEP’s role in enhancing the technical and statistical capacities of Member States, UNEP actively works with various partners to promote coordination and harmonized approaches in strengthening countries capacity in environment statistics and SDGs with the aim of “delivering as one”.
