KVAL: SDG Wizard - An Interactive Assessment and Reporting Tool for Localizing the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030

Sustainability reporting is today seen as a competitive advantage for businesses to attract investments and build a social license (eco-labels) to operate. It all started in 2015 when world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals, officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We foresee that in the near future reporting on the SDGs will become mandatory by regional and national authorities. The SDG Wizard is unique and needed, as it is the first time a Norwegian university is able to consolidate all relevant knowledge specific to SDG Targets in a single approach in pragmatic ?knowledge for society? cooperation with a single sector (marine aquaculture). The project targets to outline the industry needs, define the methodology/question bank and functionality for an application. The goal is an efficient, pedagogic report format which avoids adding costs for the users. After the project we will make the framework generic and apply the solution for other industries. It is also important to implement the Norwegian Government?s recommendation on ?Openness and reporting as a main instrument for the development of a responsible business?. Further, it will build on recognized international standards and guidelines such as the EU Taxonomy, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI materiality principle), and the UN Global Compacts ten business principles. The SDG Wizard will be designed to aid industry?s aim of reporting their SDG performance and benchmarking for all 17 goals, 169 targets and 242 indicators. This qualification project is a cooperation with the end user, Salmon Group which is a member organization for aquaculture enterprises representing 42 companies and 115 aquaculture licenses, and software vendors, ARCT as and GeoData who are delivering solutions for the end users.

The biggest realization for the project team in this workshop was the acute need to develop solid science-based sustainability indicators for the Aquaculture sector. Salmon Group believes that a common industry standard for indicators is a must. This may be carved out in a collaboration between policy makers, industry, and science. We have discussed this with such triple helix and a first meeting is scheduled in August.