Achieving SDG Results in Development Co-operation

1. Aligning development co-operation to sustainable development: Can we step up action?

Global challenges call for urgent collective action

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was endorsed six years ago, and global challenges hindering its achievement keep growing. On top of challenges such as climate change, lack of security and inequality, the global pandemic has severely impacted economies, societies and the environment. In 2019, most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to these challenges were already off track, partly due to limited international co‑operation. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years or even decades of progress in many parts of the world.

The pandemic dramatically illustrates our global interdependency and the importance of multilateralism, international co-operation and strategic partnerships for addressing global and local challenges. Policy makers worldwide recognise the urgent need for timely data and policy responses that address all three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental.

While the need to mobilise more international and domestic resources is clear, we must do so in a way that ensures that no country or individual is left behind, and that every cent counts. The economic recovery should serve as an opportunity to address the climate crisis and other systemic issues. These systemic crises highlight the need to work towards common goals, understand synergies and spillovers of policies and investments, and build long-term capacity and resilience in all dimensions of sustainable development.

The SDG framework offers many co-benefits

As a universally agreed agenda for sustainable development, the SDGs offer a holistic framework that has the potential to guide our collective action towards an equitable and sustainable planet.

The Sustainable Development Goals serve as a common standard to co‑ordinate efforts by governments, development partners, the private sector and other development actors. As a common framework, the 17 SDGs, along with their targets and indicators, can help to overcome the current fragmentation and lack of co‑ordination at country level, building synergies and maximising collective impact (Infographic 1.1).

The broad use of SDG indicators in development co-operation can help generate more and better development data and evidence everywhere. We all know the importance of timely and reliable data for decision making in an increasingly volatile world. Using the SDG framework will lead to joint efforts to strengthen the availability of (and capacity to analyse) development data for informed decision making. It will also help decision makers learn where we stand on the way to achieve the Goals and whether their actions are making a positive impact.

Infographic 1.1. Benefits of the SDG framework

The SDGs help ensure that individual and collective efforts are coherent. Their targets and indicators push development actors to tackle all three dimensions of development. Pursuit of the goals encourages evaluating how individual actions interact with other efforts and policies. The SDGs also help in identifying how domestic policies affect other countries. This is an essential factor for ensuring that all domestic and development co‑operation policies remain coherent with the global Goals, and that they support partner countries in delivering results on the ground.

Given the breadth of the challenges ahead, the SDG framework has the potential to serve as a road map for collective action. But ensuring that the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development functions as both a goal and a means for action requires sustained leadership. Partner countries and development partners are taking steps in this direction. The need for a strong impulse is more urgent than ever as many countries are lagging or backsliding on the SDGs.

SDG integration by partner countries is a work in progress

Governments in partner countries are actively integrating the SDGs into national planning and policy making, budgets, and monitoring systems. The SDGs offer countries a shared agenda to mobilise finance, actors and attention around national development strategies and government priorities. SDG monitoring is improving as countries use their SDG progress reports to catalyse efforts across government to identify, collect and monitor SDG data – with notable progress up to 2020. To date, a total of 205 voluntary national reviews on SDG progress have been presented to the United Nations, covering almost every country.

But alignment of national policy making to the SDGs remains incomplete. In 175 countries, governments have initiated the creation of institutional set-ups for promoting SDG-oriented planning, monitoring and partnerships. However, alignment to the SDG framework remains partial due to delays caused by planning cycles, pending work to mainstream the SDGs across government, weak links between SDG plans and budget decisions, and a lack of SDG data. And international support to countries for SDG mainstreaming and data gathering has been insufficient in scale and fragmented in delivery.

Infographic 1.2. Partner countries: Progress in aligning to the SDGs

Source: Authors’ elaboration based on seven country case studies and data from dashboard.effectivecooperation.org.

SDG integration by development partners is mainly at the policy level

Many development partners use the SDGs to frame their co‑operation policies, and almost all refer to the SDGs in their development co‑operation policies and strategies. In turn, their SDG priorities are progressively being reflected in the corporate results frameworks used to report on their overall contribution to global development. Still, only 55% of development partners have a corporate results framework that fully or partially aims to achieve SDG results.

Efforts to align results frameworks to the SDGs are slowly trickling down to country-level development work, although SDG uptake is even softer there. Most development partners are mapping their country-level contribution to the 17 SDGs and are using them to frame their policy dialogue, co‑ordination mechanisms and partnerships. This is particularly the case for those partners that have updated their institutional mandate and frameworks to align with the SDGs. Yet, use of the SDG framework for planning and measuring results is limited: only one-third of development partners are systematically or frequently using SDG indicators in their results frameworks at country level. For instance, only half of the development partners in Uganda are explicitly using SDG targets and indicators to measure outcomes. This proportion drops to one-quarter in Peru. However, once headquarters and capitals trigger those processes, development organisations tend to follow similar – albeit slow – SDG adoption paths (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1. Pathways of alignment of development co-operation to SDG results

Source: Authors’ elaboration based on seven country case studies.

Infographic 1.3. Development partners: Progress in aligning to SDG results

Source: Authors’ elaboration based on seven country case studies and a baseline survey.

Business as usual is no longer an option

Inertia on embracing the SDGs is too high and progress too slow for their use as a holistic guide to consistent and efficient collective action towards sustainable development. Given the increasing number of development actors, the tendency towards fragmented, uncoordinated action will worsen if steps are not taken. Inefficiencies will increase, and the lack of reliable data will make it impossible to measure progress, learn what works and what does not, and take informed decisions. There is already a proliferation of indicators. In Ethiopia, for example, we found that development partners were using 40 different indicators to measure SDG 7.1.1 on access to electricity. This made their data unharmonised, prevented further co‑operation and left the Ethiopian government without a clear picture of how many households had access to electricity across the country.

The setback caused by the pandemic should be used as a unique opportunity to recalibrate how development co‑operation is delivered and how partnerships are implemented. National development plans and the strategies of development co-operation providers need to be rethought in light of new realities. The crisis should be seen as an opportunity to unlock institutional bottlenecks, adapt norms and processes, and adopt bolder approaches to the scale of the current development challenge.

Consistent and informed leadership is needed to reverse the trend. Managing change requires both political will and strong leadership. It also requires an understanding of the barriers that have prevented further uptake of the SDGs. Leaders should also consider the opportunities that exist to strengthen the quality of development policies and programme delivery.