This document discusses how GIS can be used to support sustainable development goals (SDGs). It provides examples of how GIS has been applied to measure progress on SDGs related to poverty, food and agriculture, and health. The document emphasizes that GIS data and tools can help development organizations better understand their context, track their activities, and measure their impact on SDGs. It also notes that sustaining GIS programs requires convincing donors and management of how GIS can enhance results and make development funds go further.

1. GIS You have Probably Heard of It:
• Location
• Data
• Maps
• ESRI
• Modest Pay, Under-Appreciation
GIS + Development
14:00 – 15:00 GIS for Development Organizations

2. Slightly more complex, subjective
To the UN: 17 - Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Top 6:
1. Poverty: End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. Food / Agriculture: End hunger, achieve food security and improved
nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Health: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Education: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote
lifelong learning opportunities for all
5. Gender Equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and
girls
6. Water & Sanitation: Ensure availability and sustainable management of
water and sanitation for all
Development

3. The Other 11 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
• Employment: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and
productive employment and decent work for all
• Infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable
industrialization and foster innovation
• Inequality: Reduce inequality within and among countries
• Urbanization: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
• Consumption: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
• Climate Change: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
• Oceans: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development
• Ecosystems: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems,
sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation
and halt biodiversity loss
• Institutions: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development,
provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions
at all levels
• Jargon: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for
sustainable development
Other SDGs…

4. Only People can be Poor, Not Land or Admin-01 Units
1) Poverty

5. Participatory Land Rights Mapping:
2) Food / Ag
• Socialist Countries sometimes have
no private property system
(Tanzania)
• No Property Record means no
Loan-Collateral
• No Loans means no Credit for
Tuition, business start up costs,
Farm-Credit for seed, fertilizer
• Solution: Build Property
Boundaries from Scratch, then
attach them to a person, transfer-
able title, and a financial legal
system
Peruvian Development Economist de Soto explains how the break
down of this in the US led to the Financial Crisis (think OTC MBSs)

6. Malaria Atlas Project
by Oxford,
Gates Foundation,
WHO, and
MEASURE-DHS
3) Health

7. Global School safety Collaboration Platform by World Bank’s Global
Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery
4) Education

8. Challenge Questions:
• What SDG does your organization work towards or contribute
to?
• What Spatial-Data or Information does (or could) your
organization use in its work towards that SDG?
• How would (or does) GIS help you measure and/or manage
your organization’s context, activities, or impact on that SDG?
• Sustaining GIS in Your Organization: Do Your Donors and
Management Understand how it can stretch public funds
further OR broaden and deepen impact / dollar? – How does
this get articulated?
GIS and You…

9. Sustaining GIS in Your Organization:
• $$$ - Unless you’re private sector, it begins and ends with
Donors
• Do Your Donors and Management Understand how GIS is
contributing to your organization’s goals / objectives?
• it can stretch public funds further OR broaden and deepen
impact / dollar? – How does this get articulated?
$$$$
GIS
Donor
Grant
ProgramImpact
Reporting
?

10. Stay in Touch
Benjamin Wielgosz
Program Manager for Information & Reporting
Grow Africa Initiative - https://community.growafrica.com/
World Economic Forum
91-93 route de la Capite
1223 Cologny/Geneva
Tel: +41 (0) 22 869 37 16
Mobile: +41 (0) 79 961 23 51
Benjamin.Wielgosz@weforum.org
https://ch.linkedin.com/pub/benjamin-wielgosz/18/932/883
@BenWielgosz