1 What are the conceptual and technical connections between the

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1 Entrevista ÍNDICE DE PROGRESO SOCIAL: Complemento ideal para los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio Michael Green* Humanum entrevistó a Michael Green acerca del Índice de Progreso Social (spi) y su relación con los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS). Aquí presentamos sus respuestas, en inglés. Michael Green es Director Ejecutivo del Social Progress Imperative, una forma de medir y puntuar a las sociedades del mundo teniendo en cuenta su capacidad para suplir las necesidades de sus ciudadanos. 1 What are the conceptual and technical connections between the Social Progress Index and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? There is huge overlap and common ground between the Social Progress Index (SPI) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in terms of the issues they prioritize and the things they measure. That s why the SPI is such a good barometer of the progress we are making towards the Global Goals. The SPI currently measures 52 indicators which all fall within three broad dimensions of global social progress: basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity. The index was created in the belief that advancing global social progress requires accurate measurement of its many aspects, to allow Governments, businesses and communities to focus limited resources on the areas that can most improve citizens lives. The SPI s global focus allowing countries to meaningfully compare their social progress is well aligned with the SDGs which

2 represent a consensus of what national Governments believe the world needs to focus on, irrespective of whether they are a high, middle or low income country. Just like the SDGs, the SPI is committed to improving the lives of all people, regardless of location or background. Indeed, there is massive overlap between the targets which have been announced by the UN and the indicators that power the index. The UN s key goals of ending poverty, hunger, improving health, sanitation and education, increasing equality, and protecting the environment all tie directly into components of the SPI like Nutrition and Basic Medical Care, Water and Sanitation, Access to Basic Knowledge, Personal Rights and Ecosystem Sustainability. This makes the index a very useful tool to measure humanity s progress towards the realization of the SDGs. The 17 SDGs are an ambitious and important enterprise, but for the Goals to be met it is vital that independent organizations hold Governments and others accountable for effectively addressing the needs of their citizens. That is why the Social Progress Imperative has partnered with Global Citizen and Project Everyone to launch the pioneering People s Report Card. The People s Report Card based on indicators used in the SPI will provide citizens with annual grades for their country to allow them to see how well they are progressing against the SDG s targets. Freepik

3 2 What are the similarities between the SDGs and the Social Progress Index when it comes to leaving the GDP outside their calculations? The Social Progress Index and the SDGs are fundamentally aligned when it comes to how they measure progress, but while the SDGs do include some economic measures, the SPI is focused exclusively on social progress outcomes. One example of an economic indicator within the SDGs is Goal 8, which includes the target to Sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances and, in particular, at least 7 per cent gross domestic product growth per annum in the least developed countries. However, economic measures form only a very small percentage of the UN s targets the overwhelming majority are non-economic and are focused on outputs. In fact, the Global Goals focus far more on metrics which correlate negatively with GDP The 17 SDGs are an ambitious and important enterprise, but for the Goals to be met it is vital that independent organizations hold Governments and others accountable for effectively addressing the needs of their citizens. such as ecosystem sustainability (something that looks set to worsen in the coming years) than do the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which have preceded them. The world went a long way to meeting the UN s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) partly because economic growth was able to lift the least well off out of poverty. But in order to meet the SDGs, countries will need to focus more than ever on delivering social outputs. This is supported by some compelling recent research by Deloitte, which estimated that no realistic economic growth scenario alone will help the world even come close to meeting the Global Goals. It s critical that we focus on directly advancing social outcomes rather than hoping that economic growth will solve our problems. 3 Colombia, through Fundación Corona and the Cómo Vamos network, has made special efforts to apply the Social Progress Index to 10 of its main cities. How do you conceive the incorporation of local indicators, given the availability of data, to those of the original Social Progress Index model? How would that localization need to apply to SDGs as well? The application of the Social Progress Index to cities in Colombia is an exciting development which demonstrates that the SPI s framework can be applied successfully not just at the

4 Freepik country level but also at the city level and can be a practical tool to localize the SDGs. The SPI acted recently as the framework for local stakeholders in Colombia to shape their own city-focused measurement tool. This index for ten cities used the same 12 compocomponents as the global index but drew upon different indicators to reflect data that was both locally available and relevant to the 17 million inhabitants of the cities included in the index. For example, on ecosystem sustainability where the global index included measures such as greenhouse gas emissions and water withdrawals, the Social Progress Index for Cities in Colombia measured the number of trees per person, the availability of public space, and the amount of material recycled. As a result of this local specificity in data collection, this pioneering initiative provides cities like Bogotá and Medellín with metrics to identify relative strengths and weaknesses, make accurate judgments about where needs are unmet, and tailor policy accordingly. What s more, because this is a time series, the cities have been able to measure the progress and effectiveness of actions taken to improve the quality of life over a five-year period ( ). Take Bogotá, the city with the highest average income in Colombia. Despite its relative economic wealth, it ranks only fourth in social progress out of the ten cities, behind Manizales, Medellín and Bucaramanga. The Index provides stakeholders in Bogotá the opportunity to identify where relative weaknesses in social progress exist and to learn from the experiences of other cities how to improve them. This sort of city-level data is directly relevant to the SDGs. SDG 11 specifically focuses on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Local indexes, calibrated to specific local conditions, have the potential to provide more detailed and relevant findings so that solutions can be better tailored to meet local need. With this in mind we re hopeful that the Social Progress Index for Cities in Colombia will inspire other cities to use the SPI as a starting point in developing their own indexes.

5 4 What were the challenges the Social Progress Imperative encountered in measuring Opportunities and how do you see those challenges replicated in the SDGs' measurements? In measuring citizens opportunity which in our index includes measurements of personal rights, tolerance, and access to education the Social Progress Index combines expert assessments with survey data to arrive at our findings. But inevitably, as with all efforts to measure global progress, including the SDGs, there are ongoing challenges related to the collection of suitable, accurate, and globally comparable data. Taking the 2015 Social Progress Index as an example, we ranked 133 countries in total, but we also collected partial data on a further 28 countries which were not included in our final rankings. Collecting reliable and accurate data to measure opportunity was an area that was particularly problematic for thes 28 countries that failed to make the final cut of the Index, 10 of which did not have enough data to even register a score under our opportunity dimension. Collecting and assessing data which measures opportunity will also inevitably be a challenge for the UN. One of the targets under SDG 10, for example, is to Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome. However, just because countries vary in terms of how well they measure citizens opportunity, doesn t mean that such targets should not be included in the SDGs. In many ways the opposite should be the case: the SDGs will hopefully shine a light on those nations where data is absent or partial, which will add pressure on Governments to measure and share relevant metrics. The SDGs have to be ambitious about what targets they set and what data can be measured even if on day one not all the data is readily available. Convenio PNUD-Repsol

6 5 It is acknowledged that SDGs are part of a political commitment to development and a global agenda to achieve a set of minimum requirements by countries' governments. What has the Social Progress Imperative done to adhere to that political agenda? We at the Social Progress Imperative are fully supportive of the SDGs. The SDGs and the Social Progress Imperative share the desire not just to measure and quantify progress but to stimulate, encourage and actively participate in improving social conditions. It s for this The SDGs and the Social Progress Imperative share the desire not just to measure and quantify progress but to stimulate, encourage and actively participate in improving social conditions. reason that our Social Progress Network has been established to ensure that the Index s findings do not exist in a vacuum, but are turned into actionable outcomes. Our Network is operating in a growing number of regions, but it is in Latin America that the Network has been particularly active. For example, Paraguay was one of the first countries in the world to officially adopt the Social Progress Index as a metric of national performance in mid Responsibility for this work rests with the Social Cabinet of the Presidency that is tasked with assessing the social needs of the Paraguayan population to inform, monitor and evaluate national social investment. In total, the Social Progress Network in Latin America has 107 partnering organizations from different sectors across 10 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Representatives of Government institutions in Costa Rica and Panama, the Ministry of Social Development in Peru and Chile, the Municipalities of Cali in Colombia, Guatemala City in Guatemala and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil have also joined our networks and are leading new efforts to promote human wellbeing across the region. Through collaborative processes, partner organizations in Latin America are applying the Social Progress Index methodology to regions, cities and communities to identify the most pressing social and environmental needs, describe them in a common language, prioritize resources, align interventions, promote innovative approaches and measure the social impact of those efforts. So in terms of being agents of positive change, the Social Progress Imperative and the SDGs both occupy the same space: together we can help improve the lives of citizens all across the world. *Director Ejecutivo del Social Progress Imperative.