UNCTAD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombia organized a virtual capacity building activity on core SDG indicators which is one of the main activities of the UNCTAD's Development Account 11th Tranche Project titled Enabling policy frameworks for enterprise sustainability and SDG reporting in Africa and Latin America.
The capacity building activity was conducted virtually on the 17, 21, 22 and 23 of July 2020. The trainings were based on UNCTAD's "Guidance on core indicators for entity reporting on contribution towards implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (GCI)" and the "Core SDG Indicators for Entity Reporting - Training Manual", which was recently developed by UNCTAD to support the implementation of the GCI. The GCI is a technical tool to assist companies to provide data on a limited number of core SDG baseline indicators. It also aims to assist governments to collect such data from companies’ reports, to enable them to assess the private sector contribution to SDG implementation in a consistent and comparable manner. The core SDG indicators were identified based on key reporting principles, selection criteria, main reporting frameworks and companies reporting practices, and in alignment with the SDG monitoring framework at a macro level.
The training of the GCI indicators was divided into four areas, i.e., environmental, economic, social, and institutional. Each training day had an introduction to the importance of the indicator area, followed by a presentation of each indicator and its respective definition, measurement methodology, potential source of information and examples of measurement. A Q&A session was held at the end of each day to allow participants to ask questions and provide comments and recommendations.
The objective of the training was to facilitate building technical expertise in the area of the SDG reporting by companies, focusing on a detailed knowledge of the 33 core SDG indicators their measurement and disclosure. During the four days of training the workshop was attended by 84 participants, including stakeholders involved in the implementation of the project, and other representatives from academia and companies.
