“Mapping impact measurement in support of the 17 SDGs means abandoning the usual approach to sustainability metrics, where every indicator is treated as a separate universe, a silo, scaled in its own ordinal ranking metric,” explains a report by the authors. “In the new art and science of sustainability measurement, we take into account the interdependencies among the different SDGs.
We know all of our indicators work together to provide coherent, consolidated measures, and we know what data-based and theoretical consistencies make sense.” The presentation adds that “instead of interpreting multiple indicators in terms of a sustainability construct organized at a higher-order complexity, that construct needs itself to be mapped, modelled, and measured.”