Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

The Sustainable Development Goals were created on a foundation of cooperation. The success or failure of these goals relies entirely on inclusive partnerships at the global, regional, national, and local levels, with a shared vision for our planet’s and our people’s future. The 17th and final Goal is focused on these partnerships. Even before the pandemic, these partnerships were challenged due to limited financial resources, trade tensions, technological obstacles, and lack of data, but these issues have all been exacerbated by COVID. The monumental fiscal impacts of the pandemic are severely limiting countries’ abilities to invest in areas critical to the success of the SDGs, and on top of that, direct foreign investment has dropped considerably. Strong international partnerships are needed now more than ever. Here are some statistics from the U.N. related to Goal 17:

  • Net Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows by member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development totaled $161 billion in 2020, a 7% increase from 2019. This represented .32% of DAC donors’ combined national income, which is well short of the .7% goal.
  • For the period 2015-2019, 146 countries have birth registration data that are at least 90% complete and 151 countries have death registration data that are at least 75% complete. This translates to about 60% of countries worldwide meeting both of these criteria
  • The share of LDC exports in global merchandise trade remained constant at 1% in 2019, and has stagnated in the last 10 years. The target of doubling the share of global LDC exports by between 2011 and 2020 (to 2%) was not achieved
  • Out of 114 countries providing and/or receiving development cooperation, less than half reported making overall progress towards strengthening multi–stakeholder partnerships for development for the achievement of the SDGs in 2018
  • In 2020, 132 countries and territories reported implementing a national statistical plan, with 84 having fully funded plans. Only 4 out of 48 (8%) of LDCs reported having fully funded national statistical plans
  • ODA for data and statistics has increased from $591 million in 2015 to $693 million in 2018
  • As of 2019, just over 50% of the world’s population was online, but there is a significant variance among regions. In Europe and North America, roughly 85% of people have access to the internet, but only 20% in LDC’s.
  • For more statistics related to SDG Partnerships, please see the Goal 17 Progress site here

Goal 17 Targets:

  • 17.1 Strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection
  • 17.2 Developed countries to implement fully their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of ODA/GNI to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries ODA providers are encouraged to consider setting a target to provide at least 0.20 per cent of ODA/GNI to least developed countries
  • 17.3 Mobilize additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources
  • 17.4 Assist developing countries in attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies aimed at fostering debt financing, debt relief and debt restructuring, as appropriate, and address the external debt of highly indebted poor countries to reduce debt distress
  • 17.5 Adopt and implement investment promotion regimes for least developed countries
  • 17.6 Enhance North-South, South-South and triangular regional and international cooperation on and access to science, technology and innovation and enhance knowledge sharing on mutually agreed terms, including through improved coordination among existing mechanisms, in particular at the United Nations level, and through a global technology facilitation mechanism
  • 17.7 Promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies to developing countries on favourable terms, including on concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed
  • 17.8 Fully operationalize the technology bank and science, technology and innovation capacity-building mechanism for least developed countries by 2017 and enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology
  • 17.9 Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation
  • 17.10 Promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization, including through the conclusion of negotiations under its Doha Development Agenda
  • 17.11 Significantly increase the exports of developing countries, in particular with a view to doubling the least developed countries’ share of global exports by 2020
  • 17.12 Realize timely implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access on a lasting basis for all least developed countries, consistent with World Trade Organization decisions, including by ensuring that preferential rules of origin applicable to imports from least developed countries are transparent and simple, and contribute to facilitating market access
  • 17.13 Enhance global macroeconomic stability, including through policy coordination and policy coherence
  • 17.14 Enhance policy coherence for sustainable development
  • 17.15 Respect each country’s policy space and leadership to establish and implement policies for poverty eradication and sustainable development
  • 17.16 Enhance the global partnership for sustainable development, complemented by multi-stakeholder partnerships that mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, in particular developing countries
  • 17.17 Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships
  • 17.18 By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing States, to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts
  • 17.19 By 2030, build on existing initiatives to develop measurements of progress on sustainable development that complement gross domestic product, and support statistical capacity-building in developing countries

This Month’s Challenge:

In July 2021, we are sharing more datasets thanks to our friends at the Centre for Humanitarian Data.  Links to a number of datasets from the Humanitarian Data Exchange related to Goal 17 can be found on our data.world site here.  And as always, we are sharing Goal related data from the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal Database, with regional data on all of the targets listed above.

If you would like participate, you can use data from any source, but the overall goal is to focus your analysis on some of the topics mentioned in the Targets section above.  If you come across other interesting datasets, please let us know so we can add them to our data.world project.  Because of the Iron Viz Feeder running this month, we are extending the deadline for submission to July 31, 2021. Make sure to tag us in your submission, add the #TheSDGVizProject hashtag, and add your submission to #TheSDGVizProject tracker.

As we mentioned on our Home page, building a viz is not the only way to participate.  Our main goal is to spread awareness, so if you see a viz with #TheSDGVizProject, please share it.  And keep an eye out for a post at the end of the month with ways that you can contribute to this month’s goal.

Sources:

Centre for Humanitarian Data

Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)

Global SDG Indicators Database

Goal 17 Progress

Goal 17 Info