What roles do civil society organizations play in monitoring and reviewing the Sustainable Development Goals? An exploration of cases from Ecuador, Colombia, and Argentina

Abstract

The UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute an international roadmap to end poverty, revert environmental degradation, and fight socio-economic inequalities. Monitoring and reviewing (M&R) processes can expose countries’ success or failure in achieving the SDGs. However, SDG M&R is a daunting task. Current mechanisms mainly rely on national statistics that lack the necessary spatial and temporal granularity. Building on policy and academic discussions about the potential of citizen science data to fill data gaps in compilations for the SDG framework, we study projects implemented by civil society organizations (CSOs) in Ecuador, Colombia, and Argentina. Through a theory-sensitive empirical analysis, we systematize five main roles through which CSOs engage in SDG M&R. These roles are (1) participation promoter, (2) information provider, (3) data innovator, (4) watchdog, and (5) advocacy. These roles encompass key activities such as making SDG-relevant data available to citizens, enhancing data literacy, promoting open data from governmental institutions to enhance transparency and accountability, producing counter-narratives, and encouraging collaboration for data collection. Despite differences in their political qualities and politicizing effects, all five roles contribute to the enabling environment for collective action that is needed in governance for the SDGs.