Instructions

A first step towards sustainability

The SDG Impact Assessment Tool helps you assess how different solutions, research activities, organizations, projects, or other initiatives affect the global goals for sustainable development. In the text below, we call these activities "cases".

Carrying out an SDG impact assessment in the tool is, simply put, a self-assessment. The tool helps you tackle the SDGs in a simple and structured way, but the result is entirely dependent on your and your colleagues' expertise and commitment. Together you identify opportunities (positive impacts), risks (negative impacts), and knowledge gaps.

The SDG Impact Assessment Tool is first and foremost a learning experience. When you are forced to make a choice and weigh different aspects against each other in your assessment, you will gain new insights. In the end, you will have a better understanding of how your case relates to the SDGs and be better equipped to prioritise strategic actions forward.

How to do an SDG impact assessment

There are five steps you need to go through in the assessment. The method provides an opportunity for a systematic approach to how your work relates to the SDGs, ensuring that all aspects of sustainability are covered and discussed.

1. Gather your forces. Are you up to the task alone or can you gather a team? The 17 SDGs span a wide range of topics. Keep this in mind when inviting collaborators to attend. The knowledge you put in is also what you will get out. Ideally, you will have help from a small group with a moderator to inspire discussions and open your minds. This is not, however, a contest of being right or wrong – together you seek to challenge yourselves in the complexity of sustainable development and gain new insights. “Together you are strong.”

2. Define, refine and draw the line. It might sound trivial but agreeing on what it is you are assessing and where you draw the line (the framing and scope) of your case – is crucial. In what setting and context is it relevant to discuss ‘impact‘? Value chain, life cycle thinking, and causality might be to your help here. “Don’t try to bite more than you can chew!”

3. Sort the SDGs. Doing the assessment in the order SDG 1 through 17 is not always preferable. A more inspiring approach might be to take them on as you perceive their order of relevance to your case. Therefore, you can sort the SDGs according to “Relevant”, “Not relevant” and “I don’t know”. View this step as a guesstimate to trigger your thinking and establish an order of assessment, without spending too much time here. How you sort the SDGs has no consequences for the result. “You’ve got this sorted.”

4. Assess your impact. The assessment is done for each SDG. The tool provides a short introduction to each SDG and its targets. Since the SDGs are agreed on a global level, there might be a need to put an SDG in a national or local context. The objective is to formulate one summarised impact for each SDG. That limitation could pose dilemmas where, hypothetically, a case might be assessed as having positive impacts on one target and negative on another. Sustainable development is typically associated with compromises and making a final prioritisation in such situations is part of the methodology. Each SDG is assessed according to the following categories:

• Direct positive
• Indirect positive
• No impact
• Direct negative
• Indirect negative
• More knowledge needed

“Direct positive” or “direct negative” are defined as immediate impacts of implementing the case, whereas “indirect positive” or “indirect negative” are impacts that might arise as secondary consequences of the implementation. “More knowledge needed” is chosen when the knowledge-base is too uncertain or simply lacking to make an assessment.

Each impact assessment must be motivated. Explain your reasoning by providing relevant arguments, based on up-to-date knowledge, in a transparent and clearly understandable way. The motivation is the basis for any review and evaluation of your impact assessment.

5. Choose your strategy forward. Based on the result, formulate actions to mitigate trade-offs (negative impacts), support further synergies and potential benefits (positive impacts), and/or take on knowledge gaps. Focus on what can be done here and now and which additional partners or competencies might be needed.

As indicated in the picture above, the method is iterative in that sustainable development is an ongoing, continuous process where our knowledge is always on the move and improving. Hence, reassessing cases in face of new knowledge might yield new outcomes.

Click guide

For the best experience, use Chrome or Safari as a web browser.

Sign up/Log in. If you do not already have an account, use the “sign up” button and enter your email address and a password of your own choosing in the respective fields. A confirmation email will be sent to you including a link. After clicking the link, go back to the website of the SDG Impact Assessment Tool (you may need to update the page) and you will be automatically logged in.

New assessment. To start a new assessment, click on the “New assessment” button in the upper right corner. A window will appear where you can name your assessment and give it a short description. Please note that the title cannot be updated afterward. Make sure that you are content with it before moving on. Do not use special signs in the title and make sure that it is unique. To continue, click “Create”. An assessment is now created with your chosen name. Click on the assessment in the list and you will be taken to the assessment stage. A window will appear again with short instructions. Note that in the assessment list view you may edit your assessment description or delete an assessment by pressing the pencil or trash bin icons.

Sorting according to relevance. A window will appear. Click on the “Start sorting” button and the tool will take you through all the 17 SDGs. For each goal, you should choose if the goal is relevant or not to your case. Simply click on either the “Relevant”, “Not relevant” or “Don’t know” buttons.

Impact of each goal. When you are done with your sorting, the goals will appear on the assessment board in three different categories; “relevant”, “not relevant” or “don’t know”. To start your assessment, click on the first goal that you have sorted as relevant. A page with the goal and all its targets will appear. After reading through the introduction and the targets, click on one of the following buttons according to how your case impacts this SDG:

In the text field at the bottom of the page, please provide your motivation in max 3 000 characters.

Do the same for the 16 remaining goals.

See your result. After you have assessed all 17 goals, click on the “See result” button. This will take you to a visualisation of your assessment.

You may click on each goal in the interactive visualisation to see the motivation you provided. Fill in your strategic choices by ticking one or more options and provide a strategy in the text box in max 4 000 characters. To get the results in a printable format, click on the “Export your assessment to PDF” button.

Language

At the top right are the letters EN next to a small downward arrow. You click on those letters to change the language. If you change the language on the website, your assessment will still remain in the language in which it is written. Only the system text is changed.