This week heads of state assemble in New York to launch the Sustainable Development Goals. The agreed text lays out 17 goals and 169 targets. It is an ambitious agenda…
Will the Sustainable Development Goals make a difference?
The power and politics around ‘objective’ performance monitoring
Performance monitoring, most prominently exemplified in the Millennium Development Goals, is often perceived as providing objective results. Using the case of access to rural water supplies in Ethiopia, a new…
Post-2015 outcome document: inclusivity needed
By Julia Day “With less than 850 days remaining.” It’s a sobering thought. If we were talking about football, we’d be well in to extra time now. As it is,…
World Water Day 2013
Lyla Mehta, STEPS Centre water and sanitation convenor, writes about the need to look at the Millennium Development Goal on water and sanitation and what it means for gender justice, particularly as we look…
Decorating the Christmas tree with perfect Sustainable Development Goals?
By Katharina Welle, STEPS Centre PhD student The 2013 STEPS Symposium on “credibility across cultures” examined questions surrounding ‘best available’ scientific advice in relation to global policy processes on sustainable…
What role does the scientific community have in post-2015 debates?
ECOSOC, from unisgeneva’s photostream on Flickr by Pedro Telles, MA student, Institute of Development Studies Those who work in the development field currently find themselves in tricky debates around the…
From MDGs to SDGs: aspirations, evidence and diversity in setting global goals
By Adrian Ely, STEPS Centre Head of Impact and Engagement This week’s STEPS Centre Annual Symposium will be looking at the tensions between scientific advice and policy-making across international borders. I’ll…
HUNGRY FOR RESULTS?
By John Thompson, STEPS Centre Food and Agriculture Convenor In advance of the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit in New York on 20-22 September, the United Nations Food and…
NEW APPROACHES TO MONITORING THE MDGs?
By KATHARINA WELLE, SPRU, DPhil student Calls for increasing transparency and accountability for water supply and sanitation have been voiced in different sessions at the Istanbul 2009 World Water Forum….