What Gets Measured Gets Done: Challenges in Monitoring Water, Energy, and Food Security in Northern Canada

This paper describes the challenges that were encountered during the collection of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for water (SDG 6), energy (SDG 7), and food (SDG 2) security in northern Canada. Our findings indicate only 49% of indicator data were publicly available, while 21% had to...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:ARCTIC
Main Authors: Bogdan, Ana-Maria, Shah, Tayyab, Sidloski, Michaela, Lu, Xiaojing, Li, Meng, Ingram, Shawn, Natcher, David
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: The Arctic Institute of North America 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.14430/arctic77896
https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/download/77896/56898
https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/arctic/article/download/77896/56899
Description
Summary:This paper describes the challenges that were encountered during the collection of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators for water (SDG 6), energy (SDG 7), and food (SDG 2) security in northern Canada. Our findings indicate only 49% of indicator data were publicly available, while 21% had to be calculated using alternative sources or methods, 18% had to be replaced with proxy indicators for which data were available, and 12% of indicators were deemed unavailable entirely. The most common types of data challenges were associated with completeness, timeliness, and granularity. Given the current challenges faced by residents of northern Canada, with their livelihoods closely intertwined with the accessibility and availability of water, energy and food (WEF) resources, a comprehensive plan for data collection, storage, and management of WEF-related SDGs is required to advance WEF security from an aspirational to a transformative policy agenda.