On March 6, RIPESS took part in a teleconference consultation organized by the UN Agency SDSN (Sustainable Development Solutions Network) about their draft report on “Indicators for Sustainable Development”, which will be delivered to the UN Memberstates as part of the post-2015 development agenda process.
The report proposes 100 indicators in 10 Goals. Ripess made contributions of new indicators and of changing some of the proposed indicators for all 10 goals.
These contributions follow below, and can be better understood by accessing the draft report available at http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/140214-SDSN-indicator-report-DRAFT-for-consultation.pdf
Feel free to use it entirely of partially if your organisation wants to submit proposals on the consultation. More info on the public consultation are available at http://unsdsn.org/news/2014/03/12/public-consultation-on-indicators-for-sustainable-development/ .
RIPESS recommendations to the SDSN report “Indicators for Sustainable Development”
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GOAL 01: End Extreme Poverty including Hunger
1. US$1,25 is an unacceptable indicator in our view
–> let’s change it to the ratio between richest and poorest in each country,
–> and let’s include non-monetary indicators: There are indicators being developped using the concepts of Buen Vivir , Care Economy and Gros National Happiness.
01b. What about the quality of these proteins? We suggest that Popular access to Natural and whole food compared to industrial food be an indicator instead of a pure proteic quantity.
01b. Besides food security, food sovereignty should be stressed, with indicators as for example if food and local seeds are adequately provided by the local actors in the communities and territories
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GOAL 02: Achieve Development within Planetary Boundaries
We suggest the creation of a new Target: Transitioning to a Fair and Solidarity Economy
This target would have a set of indicators, as for example:
- Indicator on ratio between fair trade and non-fair trade products accessible to the population
- Indicator on degree of public procurements directed to Social Solidarity Economy Initiatives
- Indicator on public policies that promote a Fair and Solidarity Economy in the country in contrast to public policies that foster environment and social degrading economic activities
02a. GNI per capita must be biased by how it’s distributed in the country. Look at Brasil: we have a quite high GNI per capita and extreme poverty everywheere. If we want to respect “planet boundaries”, we should address inequality.
02a. Include associative labour in the concept of decent work.
02a. Indicator of development: increasing ratio between associative work and subordinate work
02a. Indicator on the average size of production supply chains in the different regions of a country, to value short circuits from local producers
02c. This target should be dropped: It’s well proven that better life quality assures less fertility. So there is no need to address targets explicitly there. We would save 3 targets.
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GOAL 03: Ensure Effective Learning for All Children and Youth for Life and Livelihood
03 -> How to measure the quality of the education? How to have an education which values the local culture and does not create new obsessive and frustrated poor consumers? There should be an indicator on the quality of the school: does it respect and is coordinated from below, from the reality of the community?
03 -> Indicator: rate between public or communitary school versus private schools.
03c. Drop this target: although it’s an important element, education should not have as final objective to include youth as workers in labor market. It should be focused to build human capacities, including labor, but way further than that. (popular education)
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GOAL 04: Achieve Gender Equality, Social Inclusion, and Human Rights
This was well addressed by 2 gender organisations that took part in the call. We made only one addition:
Indicator of equity in the communication band (no monopoly of corporate communication channels, level of access for communitary media to broadcasting locally and nationally)
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GOAL 05: Achieve Health and Wellbeing at all Ages
05. indicator: recognition and access to natural and preventive medicine, developped locally following the ancient available knowledge
05. autonomy from pharmaceutic industry (less patent-barriers)
05c. Add indicator on GMOs and Agrotoxic usage in the country, as harmful activities for health and wellbeing
05c. The indicator #49 could be the FIB (Gross National Happiness)
05c. Indicators for measuring buen vivir
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GOAL 06: Improve Agriculture Systems and Raise Rural Prosperity
06a. Indicator: percentage of food provided by agroecological production
06a. Indicator: Degree of Biodiversity preservation in agriculture (versus monoculture)
06a. Family based production (by scaling the production through chains and networks) versus corporate production
06c. Agrarian reform (equity in the access [universal access] of land property in the country)
06c. Local seeds: Access and right to produce local “cioulas” seeds
06c. Right to an uncontaminated production of GMOs and agrotoxics (because GMOs spread and force your crops to be considered GMO)
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GOAL 07: Empower Inclusive, Productive and Resilient Cities
07b. Not only “access to public transportation”. There should be an indicator on the ratio between usage of private cars and other means (public transportation, bycicle, etc)
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GOAL 08: Curb human induced climate change and ensure sustainable energy
08. Indicator: community and SSE initiatives of production of energy.
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GOAL 09: Secure Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity, and Ensure Good Management of Water, Oceans, Forests and Natural Resources
09. Indicator: policies and quantity of Community managed resources
09. Indicator: Public policies recognizing the commons as non-commoditifiable
09. Explicit target regarding corporate mining: broad consultation (secure) to the affected communities about the exploration, in equal conditions (self-determination)
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GOAL 10: Transform Governance and Technologies for Sustainable Development
10a. Accessibility of governance information: Open Linked Data in #89 and #90.
In the case of #90, include the business (direct and indirect) ownership as part of the report.
10b. Indicator on SSE finance tools and ethical finances for promoting local and national development
10b. Corporate and investors accountability (for corporations, on their actions; for investors, on the results of the actions of enterprises which they invested in)
10b. Contributions & penalty charges paid by companies & investors as a percentage of total cost of environmental degradation. (There are existing measurements of the total cost of environmental degradation, which demonstrate that such costs can actually be measured. What is not reflected in development reports is the rate of contribution of companies and investors to cover these costs.)
