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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) aim to provide humanity with a global roadmap to sustainability. Official SDG indicators have been intensively developed, and they have a prominent and pronounced role as a key monitoring and policy instrument. Furthermore, various complementary or alternative indicator sets have been introduced at the global, regional and national levels. This article focuses on the risks related to the national indicators. The analysis is based on experiences from the preparation processes of sustainable development indicators in Finland and insights from indicator professionals and stakeholders in Finland and Germany. The risks related to overuse, nonuse and misuse of indicators are analyzed from the perspectives of indicator contents, processes of production and communication and external context factors. Opportunities for avoiding different risks and improving the desired societal impacts and influences of indicator usage are discussed. The concept of risk is helpful in terms of empirical diagnosis and for formulating mitigation recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various expectations are placed on national‐level sustainability indicators. Ideally, they should serve as efficient tools for transformations, leading societies to sustainable paths by creating a comprehensive, reliable, timely, and easy‐to‐understand picture of the key ecological, socio‐cultural, and economic trends. Most, if not all, indicator initiatives so far have been unable to meet such grandiose expectations. This has evoked criticism of and scepticism towards the indicator approach, but has also motivated improvement of indicator sets and knowledge brokerage processes. This article discusses the role of sustainability indicators in societal transition by examining the experiences gained from the preparation and launch of a sustainable development indicator set specifically aimed at supporting national‐level policymaking in Finland. It is concluded that better recognition of the tensions between attempts to improve the quality of indicators and attempts to enhance their use in policy is key to meeting the expectations placed upon sustainability indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]