Accountability and adaptive management of recent global agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement, will in part rely on the ability to track progress toward the social and environmental targets they set. Current metrics and monitoring systems, however, are not yet up to the task. We argue that there is an imperative to consider principles of coherence (what to measure), standardization (how to measure) and decision-relevance (why to measure) when designing monitoring schemes if they are to be practical and useful. New approaches that have the potential to match the necessary scale of monitoring, with sufficient accuracy and at reasonable cost, are emerging; although, they represent a significant departure from the historical norm in some cases. Iterative review and adaptation of analytical approaches and available technology will certainly be needed to continuously design ways to best track our progress.
Authors and Publishers
Rosenstock, Todd S
Hammond, J.
Kadiyala, Suneetha
Shepherd, K.
Wijk, M.T. van
Chesterman, Sabrina
Lamanna, Christine
Luedeling, Eike
DeRenzi, Brian
Leverhulme Centre for Integrated Research on Agriculture and Health
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
University of Cape Town
The Center for Development Research (ZEF) is an institute of the University of Bonn, Germany. It started its research activities in 1997. ZEF's researchers aim to find science-based solutions to development-related issues. ZEF’s research departments on Economic and Technological Change, Political and Cultural Change, and Ecology and Natural Resources Management conduct inter- and trans-disciplinary research in, for and with emerging economies and on global issues with its collaborating research partners around the world.
World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) is a CGIAR Consortium Research Centre. ICRAF’s headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya, with six regional offices located in Cameroon, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya and Peru.
CGIAR (CGIAR)
CGIAR is the only worldwide partnership addressing agricultural research for development, whose work contributes to the global effort to tackle poverty, hunger and major nutrition imbalances, and environmental degradation.
Data provider
CGIAR (CGIAR)
CGIAR is the only worldwide partnership addressing agricultural research for development, whose work contributes to the global effort to tackle poverty, hunger and major nutrition imbalances, and environmental degradation.