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Sustainability
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Evaluating SDGs—Measuring and Managing Projects, Programs and Policies
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Evaluating SDGs—Measuring and Managing Projects, Programs and Policies

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2019) | Viewed by 12768

Special Issue Editors

Assoc. Prof. Dr. André Martinuzzi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Head of the Institute for Managing Sustainability, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria
Interests: corporate social responsibility; evaluation; science–policy interfaces; responsible innovation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Meyer

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Deputy Director of the Center for Evaluation, Saarland University, Germany
Interests: evaluation; capacity building; approaches and methods; development cooperation; environmental policy
Dr. Andrew Jenkins

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Visiting Fellow: Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK; BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Interests: impact assessment; monitoring and evaluation; rural development; water resource management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations endorsed Agenda 2030, including globally valid Sustainable Development Goals. Monitoring and evaluation are explicitly mentioned as key success factors for achieving the SDGs. However, these efforts have to deal with a high level of complexity, potential trade-offs, interconnectedness and systemic effects, as well as different perspectives and interests of various actors. While the present discussions mainly focus on indicators, evaluation is only rarely addressed—although some debates are taking place in different, but only loosely linked, scientific communities. Bringing together these different discussions is the goal of this Special Issue.

This effort is especially necessary in times when evidence-based policy making is disregarded and false claims of fake-science undermine the credibility of sound scientific methods. A resilient society needs reliable and supportive evaluations of interventions implemented for reaching commonly shared goals on different levels (policies, programs, projects, etc.). Therefore, a critical reflection on the institutionalization of evaluating SDGs in the public and private sectors may provide new insights on how to improve both the quality and impact of such kind of tools, methods, and scientific approaches.

We encourage researchers and practitioners to submit papers that

  • Provide sound background information on the respective project, program or policy, its governance system and the way monitoring and evaluation of SDGs is implemented
  • Elaborate on the evaluation approach and link it to the current scientific debate, as well as to sustainability
  • Present evidence on experiences, challenges and lessons learned (and are therefore neither concepts not pure theoretical contributions) regarding the evaluation approach and/or the implementation of SDG evaluation
  • Critically reflect and discuss the transferability and generalizability of specific cases
  • Highlight contributions to the scientific debate, as well as to the practice of implementing SDGs

Assoc. Prof. Dr. André Martinuzzi
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Meyer
Dr. Andrew Jenkins
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Sustainable Development Goals
  • SDG
  • Evaluation, Assessment, Review, Voluntary National Reviews, Appraisal, Auditing, Impact, Materiality, Monitoring and Reporting Systems

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 476 KiB  
Article
Balancing Institutions for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals Through ‘Network Within Hierarchy’
by Ryan Wong
Sustainability 2019, 11(16), 4498; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164498 - 20 Aug 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3236
Abstract
Policy integration as the central theme of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda calls for more networks for linking actors and policies. The national coordinators of SDGs implementation have maintained a steering hierarchy that creatively engages the network of ministries to develop and [...] Read more.
Policy integration as the central theme of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda calls for more networks for linking actors and policies. The national coordinators of SDGs implementation have maintained a steering hierarchy that creatively engages the network of ministries to develop and implement the National Strategy on Sustainable Development. The integration literature presents a gap in understanding the internal fights of the bureaucrats behind the glossy policy documents. The study relied on 53 in-depth interviews and public documents from Finland, Germany and the Czech Republic to reveal how bureaucrats design institutions to balance the network, hierarchy and market features by maximising the strengths of each mode. The analysis aimed to reveal how ‘Networks Within Hierarchy’ facilitates policy integration. It was found that the network deliberated slowly, rationally and personally. The supporting hierarchy provided direction, steered processes and finalised decisions, and the competitive market supplied choices of policy idea, killed bad ideas, and retained specialisation. When the network entered into endless debate, the coordinators forced a consensus through the hierarchy. Bureaucrats competed with each other in proposing better arguments for their ideas, lifting the quality of the deliberation and the consensus. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evaluating SDGs—Measuring and Managing Projects, Programs and Policies)
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Review

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11 pages, 231 KiB  
Review
Making Visible the Invisible: Why Disability-Disaggregated Data is Vital to “Leave No-One Behind”
by Ola Abualghaib, Nora Groce, Natalie Simeu, Mark T. Carew and Daniel Mont
Sustainability 2019, 11(11), 3091; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113091 - 31 May 2019
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 8906
Abstract
People with disability make up approximately 15% of the world’s population and are, therefore, a major focus of the ‘leave no-one behind’ agenda. It is well known that people with disabilities face exclusion, particularly in low-income contexts, where 80% of people with disability [...] Read more.
People with disability make up approximately 15% of the world’s population and are, therefore, a major focus of the ‘leave no-one behind’ agenda. It is well known that people with disabilities face exclusion, particularly in low-income contexts, where 80% of people with disability live. Understanding the detail and causes of exclusion is crucial to achieving inclusion, but this cannot be done without good quality, comprehensive data. Against the background of the Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, and the advent of 2015’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development there has never been a better time for the drive towards equality of inclusion for people with disability. Governments have laid out targets across seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with explicit references to people with disability. Good quality comprehensive disability data, however, is essential to measuring progress towards these targets and goals, and ultimately their success. It is commonly assumed that there is a lack of disability data, and development actors tend to attribute lack of data as the reason for failing to proactively plan for the inclusion of people with disabilities within their programming. However, it is an incorrect assumption that there is a lack of disability data. There is now a growing amount of disability data available. Disability, however, is a notoriously complex phenomenon, with definitions of disability varying across contexts, as well as variations in methodologies that are employed to measure it. Therefore, the body of disability data that does exist is not comprehensive, is often of low quality, and is lacking in comparability. The need for comprehensive, high quality disability data is an urgent priority bringing together a number of disability actors, with a concerted response underway. We argue here that enough data does exist and can be easily disaggregated as demonstrated by Leonard Cheshire’s Disability Data Portal and other studies using the Washington Group Question Sets developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics. Disaggregated data can improve planning and budgeting for reasonable accommodation to realise the human rights of people with disabilities. We know from existing evidence that disability data has the potential to drive improvements, allowing the monitoring and evaluation so essential to the success of the 2030 agenda of ‘leaving no-one behind’. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Evaluating SDGs—Measuring and Managing Projects, Programs and Policies)
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