THE WORLD'S
KNOWLEDGE NETWORK
FOR THE
SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT GOALS
WWW.UNSDSN.ORG
ABOUT THE SDSN
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN),
launched in 2012, mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical problem solving for the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. The SDSN was established by and works under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General. The SDSN supports the implementation of the SDGs at local, national, and global scales, in collaboration with UN agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector, governments, and civil society.
A Leadership Council of approximately 100 global leaders oversees the SDSN. Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia
University is Director of the SDSN, and the SDSN Secretariat is hosted by the SDSN Association, a non-profit organization
which has offices in Paris and New York.
The SDSN’s work is organized around 3 priorities for the
Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement:
National & Regional SDSNs Research & Policy Tools
The SDG Academy
Spanning six continents, the SDSN network comprises over 1,200 member institutions, most of them universities,
coordinated by 33 National and Regional Networks. They promote the localization and implementation of the SDGs, develop long-term transformation pathways for sustainable development, provide education around Agenda 2030, and launch solution initiatives to solve particular challenges. Each network focuses on distinct projects and priorities in line with their unique local contexts and challenges.
NATIONAL & REGIONAL
NETWORKS
The SDSN promotes and supports regional SDG Centers of Excellence, housed within partner institutions, to strengthen
research, training, and policy advice on SDG achievement in specific global regions. The SDG Centers work in partnership with SDSN's National and Regional Networks. SDG Centers of Excellence
operate in four regions: Southeast Asia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia);
Sub-Saharan Africa (Kigali, Rwanda); the Middle East (Abu Dhabi);
and Latin America and the Caribbean (Bogotá, Colombia).
SDG Centers of Excellence
Launched in 2015, SDSN Youth is one of the world’s biggest networks of young leaders dedicated to action for sustainable development. SDSN Youth educates young people about the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, and provides opportunities for them to pioneer innovative solutions to achieve the goals. With a membership of more than 1,200
organizations in over 85 countries, SDSN Youth create platforms for young people to connect and contribute to regional and national pathways for the implementation of the SDGs and the Paris
Agreement.
SDSN Youth programs focus on social innovation &
entrepreneurship, by providing a digital ecosystem that helps young innovators to secure funding, connect with experts and mentors, and find new collaborators to grow their solutions; by showcasing youth-led solutions aimed at achieving the SDGs; and by
implementing accelerator program that connects innovators to training on skills such as marketing and pitching, and one-on-one mentoring.
The Local Pathways Program empowers young leaders from cities across the world and equips them with knowledge, resources, and a platform to advance local dialogue, collaboration and problem- solving around the Sustainable Development Goals and to make cities and urban settlements "smart, fair and sustainable."
The Global Schools Program supports the growth of the primary and secondary level schools and teachers to transform children's lives.
Global Schools helps them to improve the quality of the current curriculum on the Education on Sustainable Development.
SDSN Youth
RESEARCH & POLICY TOOLS
The SDSN focuses on the implementation of the 17 SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. The Secretariat and SDSN’s 1,200+
member institutions support planning, policy development, and implementation of these international commitments.
The SDSN and the Bertelsmann Stiftung have been publishing the Sustainable Development Report annually since 2016. The report uses publicly available data to assess progress towards SDG
achievement for all 193 UN member states and to identify priorities for action. Each year the report focuses on key issues for the SDGs, such as international spillovers (actions by one country that impact another) and national implementation mechanisms.
SDG Index & Dashboards
The SDSN produces additional SDG indices in collaboration with other partners, including the Europe
Sustainable Development Report, the Arab Region SDG Index and Dashboards Report, and the Africa SDG Index and Dashboards Report. Furthermore, the SDSN has created indices which assess SDG achievement at the city level, such as the SDG Index and Dashboards Report for European Cities and the US Cities Sustainable Development Report.
The World Happiness Report is a landmark annual survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by their
happiness levels. With millions of downloads, it continues to gain global recognition as governments, academia, and civil society organizations increasingly use happiness indicators to inform policy-making and public discussions on development priorities.
The 2019 World Happiness Report explores how happiness has evolved over the past dozen years, with a focus on the
technologies, social norms, conflicts and government policies that have driven those changes. A separate Global Happiness Policy Report, co-produced for the first time in 2018 with the Global Happiness Council, explores policy options that governments can consider for advancing happiness.
World Happiness Report &
Global Happiness Policy
Report
SDSN has partnered with the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and Equitable Origin to create a shared understanding of how the renewable energy sector can contribute to the SDGs. For each SDG, the Atlas explores potential opportunities and impacts from renewable energy project development, and provides
recommendations for companies to better align conduct to the Sustainable Development Agenda. Building on the success of our earlier mapping project, Mapping Mining to the Sustainable
Development Goals: An Atlas, this Atlas also pays special
attention to the interconnections of the human rights framework with the SDGs.
Mapping the Renewable Energy Sector to the
Sustainable Development Goals: An Atlas
Getting Started with the SDGs aims to support stakeholders, including governments at all levels, to understand the SDGs, start an inclusive dialogue on SDG implementation, and prepare SDG- based national development strategies (or align existing plans and strategies with the SDGs). Companion guides are Getting Stated with the SDGs in Cities and Getting started with the SDGs in Universities.
Getting Started Guides for
SDG Implementation
Today’s land-use and food systems are unsustainable in developed and developing countries alike, impacting food security,
greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity and ecosystem services, freshwater use, forestry, health, and more. To address this issue, a global network of national knowledge institutions is needed to support countries in making their land-use and food systems
sustainable, which is why the SDSN and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) launched the Food,
Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE)
Pathways Consortium in 2017 as part of the Food and Land-Use Coalition (FOLU). The SDSN provides capacity development and sharing of best practices for the twenty-two regional and country teams that currently comprise this global Consortium. These teams develop coordinated national long-term pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems that are consistent with global sustainability constraints and clear global trade. These pathways allow the exploration of various scenarios linked to efficient and resilient agriculture systems, biodiversity
conservation and restoration, as well as food security and healthy diets. The FABLE Consortium then aggregates the results globally to ensure the feasibility of long-term transformation, analyzes results and key findings, and draws out policy implications which allow country teams to engage stakeholders and provide policy guidance to governments.
FABLE
Nature Map Earth is developing an integrated global map of biodiversity, carbon storage, and other dimensions of nature by consolidating and crowd-sourcing data. These integrated maps will support countries to design and implement national policies for halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity and for curbing net greenhouse gas emissions from land use.
Nature Map
The World in 2050, coordinated by IIASA with contributions from the SDSN, mobilizes the world’s leading integrated assessment teams to develop interconnected pathways for achieving the SDGs at a global scale. Their key findings were published in
Nature Sustainability in 2019 in the article Six Transformations to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The World in 2050
The Missing Middle project seeks to address two distinct
disconnects in the food system. First, the “missing middle” of the food value chain, including processors and distributors; much attention is paid on improving conditions on farms and at dinner tables, but the path between the two is less well understood. The second is the “missing middle” between scales of action; Global goal setting is by nature a top-down effort, difficult to localize.
Conversely, innovative local solutions are rarely taken to scale. By closing the gap between the two, SDSN hopes to accelerate SDG achievement.
In addition, since 2018 SDSN has organized a number of virtual conferences on important topics for SDG 2, including how to address Fall Armyworm in both Africa and Asia, the need for
nutrition-sensitive agriculture, and the interlinkages between soil nutrient management and sanitation.
Sustainable Agriculture
and Food Systems
The Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) convenes a multidisciplinary group of high-level experts working to provide accessible high-quality research, technical support, and policy-oriented solutions to harness the data revolution to
support progress on sustainable development.
This expert group aims to translate theory into practice by teasing out collective, multi-sector learnings and approaches to provide the data community with independent guidance on best practices for data governance, production, collection, innovations,
financing, and use to increase the likelihood that the data
revolution will fulfill its promise of accelerating SDG progress.
TReNDS
The majority of the world’s population lives in cities, but many cities face sustainable development challenges, such as growing inequality, air and water pollution, and lack of access to public services. The Sustainable Cities network works to address these concerns. For example, the Local Data Action Solution Initiative, a joint initiative by the Sustainable Cities network and TReNDS, awarded micro-grants to five partners who are using data to localize the SDGs in communities around the world.
Sustainable Cities
The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP), co-founded by the SDSN and Institute for Sustainable Development and
International Relations (IDDRI), prepares national pathways
towards carbon-neutral energy systems that will help achieve the goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to well below 2°C.
National research teams from the 16 highest emitting countries developed long-term pathways that informed the Paris Climate Agreement and now guide national strategies towards
decarbonizing energy systems. Additional countries are encouraged to join the DDPP initiative.
Low-Emissions Solutions Conferences (LESC) are held throughout the year and organized by the SDSN, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and ICLEI - Local
Governments for Sustainability. They promote technology and other solutions that can support the transition to low-emission economies. Conferences emphasize problem solving,
brainstorming, and global co-creation to inform nations about the latest technology developments from business, academia, and government. LESCs are hosted alongside premiere climate events throughout the year, including the annual United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP).
Climate and Energy
The SDG Academy is SDSN’s flagship online education initiative, dedicated to preparing the next generation of global leaders to achieve the SDGs. It brings together the world’s foremost experts on sustainable development to create and curate high-quality educational materials on subjects such as macroeconomics,
climate science, human rights, and public health. Since 2014, the SDG Academy’s more than 30 massive open online courses
(MOOCs) have garnered 250,000+ enrollments from 190
countries, giving industry professionals, civil servants, innovators, students, and citizens the knowledge they need to make informed decisions and inspiring them to be more sustainable in everything they do.
The SDG Academy supports education for sustainable development in higher education through its University Partnership Program, working with university departments, programs, and faculty to develop innovative blended learning models for new or existing programs in sustainable development.
The SDG Academy also hosts the Global Association of the
Master's in Development Practice program, an interdisciplinary Master's program for practitioners of sustainable development.
THE SDG ACADEMY
The SDSN depends on the generous contributions of donors. We are grateful for the many governments, foundations, philanthropists, and businesses who support the SDSN. Without their generous giving, our work would not be possible.
A NOTE OF THANKS
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