29th September 2017- Rome, Italy.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was established in September 2015 and outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. 230 SDG indicators have been established in order to measure countries' progress in delivering the SDGs.
UN Environment is the custodian of more than two dozen indicators, including but not limited to parts of goal 12 “responsible consumption and production”, goal 6 “clean water and sanitation” and goal 8 “decent work and economic growth”.
SDG 12.C specifically tackles the question of fossil fuel subsidies. In this role, UN Environment is responsible for leading the methodological development of the indicator and for compiling as well as reporting data specifically for the Secretary General’s SDG progress report.
In order to support the development of a methodology to measure fossil fuel subsidies, UN Environment’s Economic and Fiscal Policy Unit, in collaboration with statisticians from the Science Division, has established a technical expert group composed of several government delegations and experts from international organizations, think tanks, and academia.
The group met for the second time on 29 September 2017, at an event co-sponsored by the Italian G7 Presidency at the Società Geografica Italiana in Rome, Italy.
Since the previous meeting, UN Environment had commissioned a methodological options paper, which is being developed by the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This meeting provided an opportunity for a sub-group of experts to consider and discuss some of the key issues relating to the measurement of fossil fuel subsidies.
The feedback from the meeting will inform the development and revision of the options paper, which will be circulated and presented to the wider group of experts in the coming months.
