Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
About the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
In 2012, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) to mobilize global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical problem solving for sustainable development, including the design and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Following their adoption, we are now committed to supporting the implementation of the SDGs at local, national, and global scales.
We aim to accelerate joint learning and help to overcome the compartmentalization of technical and policy work by promoting integrated approaches to the interconnected economic, social, and environmental challenges confronting the world. The SDSN works closely with United Nations agencies, multilateral financing institutions, the private sector, and civil society.
Following the adoption of the SDGs, the SDSN Thematic Groups are transitioning into Thematic Networks to support SDG advocacy and implementation in key areas. Each network has one or more institutional hosts, more flexible membership arrangements, and the ability to accommodate vastly larger groups of experts. Each Thematic Network is organized around one or more SDGs and serves four major purposes:
- To act as a virtual knowledge hub through sharing new research, policy and programmatic developments, as well as educational materials (including through the SDG Academy);
- To support national and regional SDSNs and SDSN members on advocacy for the SDGs and operationalizing the goals in each country; Solution Initiatives, long-term pathways, and associated tools; and education on sustainable development, including through the SDG Academy.
- To identify and drive new forms of SDG monitoring, in conjunction with the Thematic Network on Data for Sustainable Development;
- To promote and undertake, on a case-by-case basis Solution Initiatives and special studies on how to achieve particular SDGs.
TReNDS: Data and Statistics for Sustainable Development
SDSN’s Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) convenes cross-sector technical and policy knowledge from across the global scientific, development, public and private sector data communities. Its members are leaders whose expertise spans the spectrum of global and national data policies, standards, and processes that guide data production, access, and use. The multi-disciplinary network aims to be an agile advisory group: a conduit for both high-level and grassroots ideas to be vetted, processed at an expert level, and widely disseminated. TReNDS also provides members with unique peer group exchange at the highest level. TReNDS operates independently from, but in concert with, the formal UN system and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. The Network focuses on inclusion of academic and technical partners as active participants in setting standards and agendas, while its small size and independence enables it to act quickly to spotlight challenges and opportunities within the field of sustainable development data, as they occur.
From original thought leadership, to advising and convening opportunities, to catalytic resources for pilot initiatives and critical evaluation of those pilots, TReNDS aims to contribute critical insights and to offer technical and policy-oriented solutions on the rapidly evolving sustainable development data ecosystem.
Priorities as a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) commit to catalyze SDSN’s Thematic Group on Data for Sustainable Development towards identifying new innovative data-solutions in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Coordinating and promoting academic and scientific inputs is critical to achieve the data revolution for sustainable development.
