Sets of sustainable development indicators in Vietnam: Status and solutions

There are some sets of sustainable development indicators (SDIs) at different regional scales and the Millennium development goals indicators (MDGIs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGIs) are employed in Vietnam. Actually, building and applying SDIs have faced different difficulties and this has led to a reduction in their value. Solutions to improve SDIs have been proposed and completed. This paper aims to review the SDIs, MDGIs, and SDGIs in Vietnam and to propose recommendations for building and effectively applying them in practice in Vietnam. Two national SDIs, one regional SDI, one local SDI, and some provincial SDIs, in addition to the results of MDGIs/SDGIs implementation, were analyzed. The common limitation of Government promulgated SDIs was found to not be feasible as they are applied in practice. Proposed solutions are building pilot SDIs for specific regions in Vietnam based on UN guidelines from 2007 and calculating practical values of SDIs for pilot regions, subsequently recommending relevant authorities in Vietnam to change or adjust promulgated SDIs. The experiences of procedure used to develop the pilot SDIs and effective handing over the usage of SDIs to stakeholders should also be considered when developing the sustainable development goals indicators in the future.