Abstract

With the aim of helping its Member countries to implement the 2030 Agenda, and at their request, the OECD has developed a methodology for measuring the distance that OECD countries have to travel to achieve SDG targets. Since 2016, a series of reports has shown OECD average and country-level distances from the SDG targets based on indicators from UN and OECD databases. These reports also presented the current data gaps, identifying areas where statistical development would be critical to assess whether OECD governments are meeting the commitments they made when signing the 2030 Agenda in 2015. Beyond providing a static snapshot of where countries stand today, the latest edition developed new tools to assess progress towards the SDGs over time, including a trend assessment (i.e. whether the trend, based on current policies, has been upwards, stable or downwards) and projections relying on stochastics methods to assess the likelihood of meeting the 2030 targets.

The presentation will discuss the main methodological considerations underpinning the OECD assessment and will discuss how and why such choices may impact the final assessment. It will also discusses the potential discrepancies existing with other international measures of progress toward the SDGs.