Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their indicators provide opportunities to best combine the available knowledge and data to monitor and estimate different metrics and track their progress. The overall picture can be complex as some indicators are often interconnected (e.g., rural and/or urban development with a water body’s status). Two factors can play a crucial role in achieving the SDGs: the use of new technologies for database building and multidisciplinary studies and understanding. This study aims to explore these factors, highlight their importance and provide an example as guidance of their proper and combinative use. Ireland is used as an example of a data-scarce case with poor–slow progress, especially on the environmental SDGs. Two “non-reported” SDG indicators (lack of data) are selected and estimated in this work using freely available data (remote sensing, satellite imagery) and geospatial software for the first time in the country. The results show improvements in rural and urban development; however, this is accompanied by negative environmental consequences. A more holistic approach is needed and a broader conceptual model is presented to avoid any misleading interpretations of the study of SDGs. The transition to the modern technological and multidisciplinary evolution requires respective knowledge and understanding, strongly based on complex systems analysis.
Highlights
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) are 17 actionoriented goals, universal, integrated and transformative, and applicable to all nations, and that cover the whole sustainability agenda: poverty, human development, the environment and social justice [1]
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was formally adopted by 193 heads of government in 2015 [2] and in 2017 the UN Statistical Commission adopted their measurement framework comprised of 232 indicators designed to measure the 17 SDGs and their respective 169 targets
The criticism around the SDGs refers to their concise and objective character, the achievement of country-effective measurements and the difficulties for setting priorities, and the measuring, validating and communicating of 232 indicators [4,5]
Summary
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) are 17 actionoriented goals, universal, integrated and transformative, and applicable to all nations, and that cover the whole sustainability agenda: poverty, human development, the environment and social justice [1]. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was formally adopted by 193 heads of government in 2015 [2] and in 2017 the UN Statistical Commission adopted their measurement framework comprised of 232 indicators designed to measure the 17 SDGs and their respective 169 targets. The SDGs provide the general recommendations, and each country best combines the available knowledge, data and techniques to achieve them through proper application, measurement and progress tracking. This creates many opportunities in terms of science and practical research to overcome the various challenges
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