Custodians of Sustainable Development: Does global governance fragmentation hinder coordination for the SDGs?

In 2015, the United Nations set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets, to be achieved by 2030. To measure progress, 231 indicators were specified, creating the challenge of coordinating the collection and reporting of these data. To help address this, 44 international agencies were mandated to serve as “indicator custodians.” Yet, centralized coordination is lacking, and the division of labor emerged organically. Consequentially, each SDG has a different custodian arrangement with varying degrees of fragmentation. Which arrangements proof most effective in maximizing coordination? This is our leading question in this article. Following our operationalization of fragmentation, SDG 3 and SDG 10 constitute cases of low and high fragmentation, respectively. We assess these cases and find evidence supporting the view in governance scholarship that institutional fragmentation negatively impacts coordination. We then draw inferences from these case-studies about expected degrees of coordination for all issue areas covered by the SDGs and propose adjustments to the organization of indicator custodianship.