Measuring Progress Towards Green Economy in South Africa

14-16 May 2018, Pretoria, South Africa – The Government of South Africa identified the establishment of a national green economy progress framework as a priority focus area for PAGE’s support. To advance the establishment of the green economy progress framework, PAGE, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), and the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) of South Africa jointly organized a national training and a stakeholder engagement workshop on indicators for green economy policymaking.

On 14-15 May 2018, PAGE delivered a 2-day training, with participation from monitoring and data professionals from the DPME and the National Statistics Office (StatsSA). The training presented the methodology of PAGE’s Green Economy Progress Measurement (GEP) Framework and discussed its application for policymaking.

The GEP measurement framework measures progress towards implementing most of the Sustainable Development Goals. It includes 14 direct links to 10 of the Sustainable Development Goals (see below). The framework also measures progress in achieving national priorities, where countries are able to customize the framework by choosing their own targets and indicators. Finally, establishing the framework brings transparency and accountability to policymaking, where it measures shortfalls as well as the relative importance of one area of progress with respect to others for informed decision

The training featured a South-South Exchange with the lead researcher from Nanjing University, Dr. Beibei Liu,  on Jiangsu Province’s experience of applying the Green Economy Progress Framework in China, and a contribution by Dr. Albert Merino, of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), who provided an overview of green economy monitoring frameworks and their linkages to SDGs.

Partners from the South African government expressed their interest in applying the methodology, particularly as an important tool to highlight policy priorities in the next planning cycle and to inform policymakers on setting policy targets as well as the links of indicators to the SDGs.

In addition to the national training workshop, a preliminary scoping workshop titled “Establishment of a South African National Green Economy Progress Framework” gathered national stakeholders at the Department of Environmental Affairs in Pretoria, South Africa on 16 May. The objective of the workshop was to engage with key stakeholders on the potential forms that a national green economy indicators framework might take in line with national priorities and local contexts. At the end of the workshop, the participants produced a preliminary list of 40 potential indicators to incorporate in the national framework for South Africa.

As a next step, DPME is engaging internally on the green economy progress measurement framework in South Africa with the ultimate goal of standardizing monitoring practices.

For more information about the Green Economy Progress Measurement Framework Methodology and Application, please visit this link.

If interested in hearing about the methodology via webinar, please visit this link.

Green Economy Progress Measurement Framework | PAGE (un-page.org)