Each Goal influences many or even all of the others. For example, investing in health has benefits for education and employment opportunities. Relatedly, government policies in different sectors can create positive feedbacks and synergies, but they can also have unintended, negative consequences that cut across different sectors and even extend beyond national boundaries. To address this, the OECD has formulated a set of eight principles aiming at enhancing “policy coherence for sustainable development”.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development sets out 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with concrete targets like ending child marriage everywhere, or ensuring everyone has access to affordable and reliable electricity. These goals are universal, meaning that all countries have committed to strive towards them. They aim to improve people’s lives all over the world, foster prosperity and protect the planet. To support this global endeavor, the OECD helps countries devise strategies, strengthen governance frameworks and measure progress towards achieving the Goals.
Key messages
Before the COVID-19 crisis, the SDG financing gap for developing countries was over USD 2.5 trillion. That has now risen to over USD 4 trillion because of the need to offset the economic impact of the pandemic coupled with a downturn in private investment. The OECD points out that this still represents only around 1 percent of global financial assets, and calls on governments and other public and private stakeholders to better orient those resources to the regions and communities that need them the most.
We are only few years away from 2030, the SDGs target year, but OECD and other economies still have some way to go to meet their SDG commitments. Objectively identifying what has been achieved and what remains to be done can help to focus thinking and guide decisions on the most effective courses of action. The OECD has developed a tool to enable its members to measure the distance to the SDG targets. It reveals mixed results: the OECD area as a whole is close to securing basic needs, but implementing the SDGs in a coherent way to achieve social and environmental goals remains a major challenge for most countries.
Moving forward on the SDGs requires a whole-of-society approach, with citizens and stakeholders supporting SDG policies and participating in their achievement. Good communications can help build trust in institutions working to achieve the Goals. It can increase awareness and mobilise action, for example by promoting climate-friendly behaviours, positive attitudes to gender equality and increasing investments into sustainable development. The OECD Development Communication Network (DevCom) promotes peer learning on how to engage citizens and stakeholders for the SDGs.
Context
Obstacles to implementing policy coherence
Implementing change on the scale required by the SDGs demands both the capacity and the institutional structures to enable complex decision-making and drive the whole government towards holistic solutions. In other words, to achieve the SDGs, we need coherent policies that help us make progress in multiple areas.
Addressing this presents both technical and political challenges. OECD research suggests that key obstacles to improving policy coherence for sustainable development (PCSD) include the limited enforceability of measures for coherence and insufficient technical capacity on the topic. Making progress in these areas will require strengthening data and methodologies for impact assessment and improving the communication of the benefits of policy coherence and the costs of incoherent policies.
Are we there yet?
The OECD area as a whole has met 10 of the 169 SDG targets for which performance can be measured and is close to 18 more. These are mainly those related to securing basic needs (such as eradicating extreme poverty or reducing maternal and infant mortality) and implementing policy tools and frameworks. However, in a number of areas, OECD countries are not on track to meet their targets by 2030 – to reduce inequalities, to restore trust in institutions and to limit pressures on the natural environment and climate.
