HOW IS EVERYONE
DOING?
We found out.
WHAT WE CREATED
90+ countries.
90+ insightful reports.
Hundreds of ways forward.
Each report stems from national priorities and challenges that countries navigate daily. The reports deliver a playbook, showing the policy choices made by governments under tight fiscal and financial constraints. Integrating multiple data sources allows for the analysis of SDG trends, national priorities, interlinkages, and potential futures, pointing to macro-patterns and SDG pathways that will endure beyond 2030.
WHAT WE KNOW
Global Patterns and Emerging Insights
Here are the most important patterns – some encouraging, others needing more attention. Acceleration is powered by SDG interlinkages: SDG combinations with the best potential to accelerate progress. This helps countries navigate complex and often colliding development challenges.
COUNTRIES ARE FOCUSED ON GROWTH, SOMETIMES AT-ALL-COSTS
After three years of crises, countries are focused on achieving broad-based growth with jobs and income generation – sometimes driven by fossil fuels, commodity booms or debt financing. There is a growing gap between the “growth we get” versus the “development we want” which expands human development within planetary boundaries with productivity gains.
Sustainable development and climate goals are at a precipice because countries’ choices are constrained. A focus on growth, jobs and poverty reduction must be reconciled with national ambitions on decarbonization and energy transition. Growth at all costs will not achieve the SDGs, but the right policy response will.
Spotlight: Iraq 🇮🇶
Iraq’s economic growth is accelerating, but at the expense of the environment, due to fossil fuel usage and land-use change. The country is diversifying its economy by boosting employment opportunities away from the oil sector, to pursue development in a more green and inclusive way. Significant challenges remain given that the economic expansion is not expected to notably reduce poverty.
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FISCAL AND FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS ARE SHAPING POLICY CHOICES
Current finance systems are undermining sustainable development. Debt overhang is damaging prospects for human development. In the world’s poorest countries, debt servicing costs 2.3 times more than social assistance and 1.4 times more than health.
Spotlight: South Africa 🇿🇦
To drive industry and service sector growth, South Africa is focused on simultaneously creating private sector jobs and matching skills in the labour market to demand. Together with strong social protection programmes, these efforts can make significant contributions to the country’s overarching objectives of reducing poverty and inequality – but only when combined with a fiscal stimulus.
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CHOOSING POLICY BUNDLES RATHER THAN SILVER BULLETS
Despite years of compounding crises, many countries are turning the tide with innovations that transform their predominant pattern of development. They are investing in energy transitions – many seeing the potential of green economies – but they need technology and finance to enable this policy choice. Rather than a trade-off, progress is dependent on responding to today’s pressures while making structural transformations through green and digital transitions.
Spotlight: Republic of Moldova 🇲🇩
In Moldova, the national policy-making priority has been mitigating the economic and energy fallout of the war in Ukraine. Moldova’s integrated investments in digital transformation, including for social protection, ensured that short term energy subsidies reached the most vulnerable, and helped reduce the number of energy-poor households by threefold.
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HOPE MEANS: LEAVING NO ONE BEHIND
Societies are heterogeneous, with individuals and groups having diverse needs and vulnerabilities. To ensure no one is left behind, development pathways must be equitable and inclusive. This includes inclusive, responsive and quality delivery of public goods and services that address geographic disparities and location-specific needs.
Spotlight: Indonesia 🇮🇩
Indonesia’s SDG ambition centres on well-being. Through integrated investments across basic services in education, infrastructure, health coverage, and green transitions through energy efficiency, their focus on local action and SDG planning provides a robust foundation for SDG acceleration.
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“Resilience, well-being and sustainability are the three vital ingredients for human development today. The SDGs are the catalyst for inclusive and low carbon growth”
Achim Steiner, Administrator
Future-smart integration
SDG midpoint: how to generate momentum
Understanding the interplay between the SDGs will identify policies and secure multiple, reinforcing wins at the same time. To succeed, we must also:
Invest in data for better decision-making
Pursue growth that meets people’s and planetary needs
Lead with ambition and anchor with evidence
Identify what needs to move faster and what has to stop
While regional and country context resulted in different variations, focusing on the combination of three SDGs in particular yielded most positive gains for overall progress on the SDGs. These interlinkages were economic growth (SDG 8), effective and accountable institutions (SDG 16) and sustainable cities (SDG 11). Here’s a closer look at the integrated pathways we identified: