Executive Summary - Measuring Progress: Water-related Ecosystems and the SDGs

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Measuring Progress series of reports provides an overview of the progress made in data availability for the 92 environment-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators, coupled with improvement or degradation in the trend of each indicator. It also explores the potential and limitations of using statistical analysis to demonstrate interlinkages between indicator pairs to better inform policymakers of the synergies and trade-offs between SDGs. The indicators are divided into four categories: (i) state of the environment, (ii) drivers of change, (iii) state of human well-being and (iv) socioeconomic and environmental factors. This report explor es the use of multivariate statistical analysis using water-related ecosystems (freshwater and marine) as an example of the utility of this approach to explore how ecosystems are impacted by drivers, pressures and actions at multiple scales.