Veronika Efremova (p), Leman Yonca Gurbuzer (p), Irena Djimrevska

Mira Manini Tiwari

This paper highlights the progress of Western Balkan countries in reporting on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, which focuses on achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls, with particular emphasis on Indicator 5.a.1, which monitors gender equality in agricultural land ownership and secure rights. The study examines the significant achievements made by the region towards implementing SDG 5, while also highlighting existing gaps and challenges. The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the Western Balkans between 2015 and 2016 has set a clear path for advancing gender equality and fostering economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability, with SDG 5 playing a central role in these efforts. Despite progress, traditional gender roles, inadequate legal frameworks, and socio-cultural barriers continue to hinder women's access to land and property rights, particularly in rural areas. These challenges limit women's economic empowerment and their ability to contribute to sustainable development.

The paper outlines the collaboration between the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with the National Statistical Offices and Ministries of Agriculture. Through capacity-building initiatives and pilot surveys in the Western Balkan Six, the approach used aimed to improve status of women in the land ownership and to increase availability of gender disaggregated data that would feed into evidence-based agriculture and rural development policy design, monitoring and evaluation.

The paper concludes that addressing legal, financial, and cultural barriers to land ownership is crucial to achieving SDG 5 in the region. It emphasizes the need for continued data collection and reporting on SDG Indicator 5.a.1 in the Western Balkans to measure progress and promote gender equality in land ownership, with a particular focus on policy interventions that support rural women's empowerment.

Keywords: SDG 5, women empowerment, agriculture and rural development policies, gender equality, land ownership, gender disaggregated data

Mira Manini Tiwari (p), Gaby Umbach

Flavia Barca

As editors of the forthcoming Elgar Companion to Data and Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals, we undertook the creation of an original dataset of global sustainable development (SD) indices to examine the political economy and geo-politics of sustainable development measurement and reporting. This was grounded in two principles: the need for innovation in measurement to re-evaluate and adapt existing global goals and SDG practices to local realities, and the consequent need to assess and operationalise the quality of SDG data for distinct contexts.

Unlike prior comparisons of SD measures, the dataset focuses not only on what the indices measure (a granular comparison of the indicators, areas, and roots in global frameworks), but also how they are developed. This ‘how’ analysis includes the political economy and geopolitics dimensions of the production as well as the funding of the indices. These analyses, hitherto unseen in SD data research, enable the examination of the actors and contexts that form the basis of global SD measurement and reporting. Finally, the dataset compares the data quality features of each index, investigating factors including the accessibility, usability, comprehensibility, relevance, and timeliness of the index in order to shed light on the scope for engagement with the data by civil society and governments at the regional, national, and local levels.

The indices of the final dataset meet the criteria of being cross-border (regional or global), multi-area (not a single goal), and multi-annual (not a one-off). This served to identify those indices that possess agenda-setting power in shaping how other actors and contexts understand and enact sustainable development. The dataset also reveals the unique approaches of regional, sub-regional or special conditional indices, and indices of inter-governmental organisations. The former reflect an interest in how geographical, social, and economic factors intersect to impact sustainable development performance. The latter highlight the recognition of cross-border actors’ bearing on national sustainable development

The presentation will detail the dataset findings: the implicit definitions of sustainable development and the indicators employed; the measurement of SDG spillovers and synergies; measures of absolute, comparative, and relative progress across time and contexts; the role of research, custodian, and inter-governmental actors in index production; the extent and nature of non-traditional data usage and its implications; the levels of data disaggregation; the data accessibility; the Northern European and high-income dominance in index funding and creation; and the implications of this for localised SDG measurement and governance in practice.

Flavia Barca (p)

Nevelina Pachova

The aim of the paper is to show the relevance of culture for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to translate this value into a set of indicators that can be monitored at the local level. To this end, 40 indicators were extracted from the most relevant sources, categorized into four key areas: economic contributions, access to cultural resources, wellbeing, and cultural education. Balancing traditional metrics with innovative approaches to capture both tangible and intangible benefits of culture, they illustrate how culture influences local development, from economic impact to social cohesion and environmental stewardship. In order to provide policymakers with a practical implementation tool to test the relationship between culture and development, a final framework of ten ‘strong’, effective and measurable indicators was then identified.

Nevelina Pachova (p), Adriana Verán (p)

Veronika Efremova

Multi-level governance processes and structures can hinder or enable the achievement of policy goals. In this study we explore the interlinkages and scope for synergies at the regional and local level between two related but different policy agendas and processes, namely the internationally-agreed SDGs and the EU-led Just Transition (JT) process. We do so by juxtaposing the SDG and JT goals and targets and exploring how they relate to the needs and priorities of local level stakeholders and groups in line with calls for localizing the SDGs but also to those of communities on the margins in line with the JT objective of leaving no person behind in the process of decarbonization and change. The study draws on the results of a cross-regional study on the topic undertaken in the framework of the EU-funded BOLSTER project but focuses on the insights from action-research undertaken with communities on the margins of the just transition in the former mining region of León, Spain. Specifically, it demonstrates how enabling communities on the margins to achieve their needs in line with the JT objective of leaving no one behind can contribute to the achievement of critical SDGs, such as gender equity (SDG 5), reduced inequality (SDGs 10), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), and strengthen institutions and participatory decision-making processes (SDG 16), among a range of other ones. The results point towards the benefits of linking policy agendas at the higher scales as a means of enabling local action and transformative change.