Global Policy Journal: Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring SDGs

Global Policy Journal is an innovative and interdisciplinary journal published by Durham University which brings together world class academics and leading practitioners to analyze public and private solutions to global problems and issues.

A special issue of the journal has just been published featuring contributions by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, professor of international affairs and the director of the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in International Affairs. The special issue explores the transitions from an international world of statistics to a more plural, global realm of data and the acute implications for the politics and accountability of knowledge production related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and development writ large.

Even as the SDGs embrace the rubric of “no one left behind,” the emerging data politics might be eroding the ability of poorer states to know and act upon their development problems on their own terms.

Fukuda-Parr co-authored the introduction, available here, and discusses the selective nature of SDGs, featured here.

A launch event was held at The New School on Thursday, February 7, featuring contributors Sara Burke of the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung New York Office; Alicia Yamin, Harvard School of Public Health; Meg Satterthwaite, NYU Law School; Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, The New School, International Affairs; and Manjari Mahajan, The New School, International Affairs. A recording of the event can be streamed below.