Sharing evidence and insights on advancing the 2030 Agenda
Published on 24 January 2025
Overview
With less than 5 years remaining to achieve SDGs, the task ahead may appear unattainable. Collecting evidence and insights on how to identify pathways for policy integration and acceleration, sharing experiences, and offering practical recommendations are crucial steps toward realizing the 2030 Agenda.
Consolidating evidence and insights for SDG acceleration across the world
Drawing from the organization's national, regional, and global experiences in policy support, UNDP has initiated a call for papers to showcase the status and challenges related to the 2030 Agenda, along with demonstrated solutions and lessons on how governments can expedite the achievement of the SDGs. Out of 75 papers submitted from 8 Regional and 12 Country Offices, as well as 12 teams from Headquarters, 15 provided evidence on how data and analytics can be utilized to advance the SDGs. These papers also offered future-oriented policy analyses and recommendations that can be replicable in various contexts, making them relevant to policymakers beyond UNDP and outside the local context.
What these papers tell us?
The papers collectively showcase a diverse array of strategies and solutions related to SDG budgeting and financing, integrated and innovative approaches, as well as the utilization of data and analytics to identify impacts, priorities, accelerators, track SDG progress, and shift policy direction.
In the coming years, substantial public and private investments are crucial for realizing the SDGs. Evaluating a country's SDG financing efforts and the correlation between public budgets and development indicators provides a diagnostic of the feasibility of achieving the SDGs in a particular country. Tools exploring innovative finance mechanisms can help bridge the investment gap.
This represents the contribution of UNDP Colombia. The analysis of historical budget data and development indicators reveals challenges in achieving SDG targets by 2030, with only 18% of SDG indicators expected to reach their targets by that year. Structural bottlenecks persist in nearly 65% of SDG indicators, remaining unresponsive to increased resources. Budget reallocations, rather than relying solely on resource mobilization, could have a more significant impact. The country office has developed an SDG budget tagging methodology to align public policy with the SDGs and a toolkit mapping 28 financing mechanisms to enhance resource mobilization.
Data forms the foundation for informed decisions and policies, aiding in progress tracking, gap identification, and evidence-driven choices. Advanced analytics play a pivotal role in delivering the information required to expedite progress and achieve the transformations needed for ‘the world we want’.
UNDP's Regional Bureau for Africa has introduced an innovative approach to examining the underlying drivers of SDG progress through data. The paper emphasizes that variations in SDGs related to human development along with the energy transition goal (SDG1, SDG2, SDG3, SDG4, SDG7), primarily account for most of the changes observed in SDGs.
In Mali, the small area estimation technique developed poverty profiles across 703 municipalities, enhancing geographic targeting of inclusive policies and strengthening anticipatory governance.
An integrated development approach recognizes the interconnectedness of the SDGs, ensuring actions in one area don't undermine progress elsewhere.
The Bangkok Regional Hub utilizes blended predictive analytics and strategic foresight to model internal migration in Vietnam and Pakistan by 2050, considering climate change effects. This guides anticipatory planning for potential impacts on social, political, economic, spatial, and environmental aspects.
The Nature Hub team has showcased how integrated spatial planning breaks silos, revealing synergies among actions to achieve SDGs across national priorities. Through this planning, stakeholders can build consensus on critical policy commitments related to nature, climate, and human well-being, along with pathways to achieve them
