From February 8th to 9th at Bilbao, Spain, the Division for Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA/DSDG), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNPD), organized an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) in preparation for the review of the five focused SDGs of the 2023 at the UN High Level Political Forum. The EGM aims to help inform the HLPF and the planning of its sessions as well as to contribute to the evidence base for collaborations and programmes of work on the SDGs going forward from 2023. The meeting was divided into 12 thematic sessions and was joined by more than 50 leading experts, both online and on-site, from UN Agencies, international organizations, and global scientific communities. Ms. Lotta Tähtinen of the Outreach and Partnership Branch at UN DESA’s Division for SDGs moderated the meeting.
Prof. Guo Huadong, director general of CBAS, was invited to give a consulting report named “Solutions Driven by Big Data for SDG 11 Implementation” during the session for SDG 11 and the Science, Technology and Innovation Forum (STI Forum). Prof. Guo pointed out that the implementation of SDG 11 still faces a multitude of challenges, particularly a severe data gap for half of the indicators, and the incompatibility of the evaluation system for indicator assessment to properly account the various economic, social and environmental contexts of different targeted regions. As a result, he stressed the imperativeness to further strengthen the development and application of digital technologies like Big Earth Data, earth observation, digital twins and cloud computing to support urban sustainability, and push for the localization of the SDG 11 evaluation under the facilitation of the UN as the priorities for this year’s review at the HLPF.
The session also included a consulting report from Ms. Anita Gurumurthy, the executive director of IT for Change, focusing on data governance and citizenship, and an extensive open discussion under the session’s theme with the experts at the meeting.
Prof. Guo giving presentation.
Experts at the meeting.
The 2023 HLPF will have an in-depth review of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): 6 on clean water and sanitation, 7 on affordable and clean energy, 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure, 11 on sustainable cities and communities, and 17 on partnerships for the Goals. The theme of this year’s Forum is “Accelerating the recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at all levels”.