The purpose of this workshop is to bring about a new paradigm in understanding and evaluating the SDGs. More precisely, we plan to develop a methodology that can evaluate how much we have achieved in meeting the goals and what has to be done to make it realistic, relevant, and conceivable to the policy community, academicians, and other partners. We still have eight years to achieve the goals and their specific targets. For this, we need primary data that can be transformed into accessible indicators from geographical regions where data compilation is not a norm. We also need a better understanding of the interactions between the SDGs to identify the mutually reinforcing factors and trades-off between them. Thus, we designed a workshop to brainstorm the methodology for data compilation from inaccessible or conflict-ridden regions. We will then discuss how to present geospatial data and indicators in a way that is easily accessible and comprehensible for policymakers and practitioners to follow the progress and identify the challenges in achieving the SDGs.
The scoping workshop will bring together researchers from Japan and overseas with extensive international experience in the analysis of peace and security related to climate change and sustainable development. It will further provide a platform to initiate a joint research effort between the involved universities for a better evaluation of the interactions between the mentioned SDGs in the context of Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions. This workshop is supported by MIRAI 2.0.
The core team will include researchers from Hiroshima University (Prof. Ayyoob Sharifi and Dr. Dahlia Simangan), Linköping University (Dr. Maria Jernnäs and Prof. Björn-Ola Linnér), and the Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (Dr. Remi Chandran). Researchers and students from partner universities in Japan and overseas will also participate in this workshop.