Larry MacFaul & Joy Hyvarinen, VERTIC

Success in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals will rest, in part, on how well efforts can be guided and where resources are directed. If the international community can agree on a reliable indicator framework and commit to on-going monitoring, progress towards the goals can be tracked, and implementation actions can be evaluated and refined. The recent session of the negotiations on the UN post-2015 agenda focused on how these important systems – including ‘follow-up and review’, and ‘indicators’ – might be established.

Marianne Beisheim is a Senior Researcher at the German Institute for International and Security affairs of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), an independent research institute. Marianne’s research focuses on governance issues and the role of non-state actors, in the field of sustainable development. Her work includes research on the design of a follow-up and review process for the Post-2015 SDGs and on transnational partnerships for sustainable development.

On 9th July 2013, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) formally adopted by consensus the format and the organisational aspects of the high level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF). The forum will replace the existing body for sustainable development within the UN – the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) – which will close down after 21 years of hard work on 20th September, prior to the first meeting of the HLPF on 24th September 2013 (both will take place as part of the beginning of the 68th session of the UNGA).