19/03/2024
Post on using SDGs
Hello, AEA365 community. My name is Dorothy Lucks, an inaugural member of EVALSDGs, a credentialed evaluator, a Fellow of the Australian Evaluation Society, and Executive Director of Sustainable Development Facilitation (SDF) Global, a social enterprise that works to facilitate change through evaluations. At SDF Global, we have a strong focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
For those of you who are already committed to sustainable development in your own evaluation practice, you may be considering ways to engage the evaluation participants to consider their contribution to the SDGs and sustainable development. It is important for us to make an effort to link evaluations to the SDGs. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more prominent in the evaluation sector, explicitly linking evaluations to the SDGs has the power to pick up the pace of SDG-related action and learning. We have put together a few tools that we have used over the years that you may find useful.
Hot Tips
1. Use SDG language and communication tools. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was crafted by representatives across 193 countries. Having been part of some of the discussions, we know how much effort was made to keep the language and terms simple and accessible to most audiences. Using the same wording relevant to the evaluation work that you are doing provides a good link to the SDGs and the concepts that underly the intent of the goals. The SDGs communication materials are free to use, are attractive and are available in 6 languages.
2. Use relevant SDG indicators and analytics. There is an SDG database that is a portal for each indicator and that provides data worldwide. Using the most recent data can help to get evaluation participants thinking about how what they are dealing with is both a local and a global issue. You can compare the context that you are working in with other similar contexts to help with assessing progress or seeking innovative recommendations that could be adapted to the needs of the people that you are working with. There are links to useful resources on many topics that can give ideas on how analysis is being done, case studies and other useful resources.
3. Use the 5 Ps and SDG dollars to demonstrate trade-offs and priorities. This was an innovation that we used with a group of decision-makers in a city where there were competing priorities for resources between social, economic and environmental concerns. Using the 5 P’s of the 2030 Agenda: people, prosperity, planet, partnership and peace, it was easy to ask participants to speak up about their priorities. Then each person was allocated the same amount of SDG “money”. Each participant could “spend” the money in line with their priorities. But then it was clear what could not be funded if their priority received what it needed. It also raised the question of power balance when there were more people with the same priority that could advocate using their resources – leading to lower resources for the environment or vulnerable people. This was a powerful way to bring home the realities of the city budgeting process and the risks and trade-offs implicit in decision-making for sustainable development.
I hope these top three tips will help you think about how you actively bring the SDGs into your evaluation practice. Using tools like these can bring sensitive issues for sustainable development to the forefront of evaluation work in a participatory and strategic way, that engages decision makers in a practical way and leads to better decisions and ultimately more sustainable outcomes.
