Sustainable development is a concept encompassing a wide range of economic, social and environmental issues. Effective implementation of sustainable development objectives is an institutional challenge with which all governments are struggling. The sustainability challenges facing developed and developing countries are enormous, but as many of these challenges are common to several countries, we can share our experiences and best practices and learn from each other through workshops such as this one.

Achieving the goals of sustainable development depends to a large extent on governance practices, particularly the effective implementation of national sustainable development strategies (NSDS). The essence of these strategies is to integrate government decision-making in the economic, environmental and social spheres and to consider the longer-term implications of all policies. The Stockholm Workshop aimed at developing recommendations for the true “institutionalisation” of sustainable development in order to embed the concept in government operations for the long-term and reduce the vulnerability of sustainable development aims to shorter-term political objectives.

What is sustainable development, for me and the Swedish government? The members of one generation should not live their lives in a way that prevents their children or future generations from enjoying a decent standard of living. That concept, summed up by the term “sustainable development”, is today an overall objective of Swedish Government policy, both nationally and internationally.

The theme of this workshop, "Institutionalising Sustainable Development", is one that I find personally of great interest and, as we look at today’s soaring economic and dismal environmental trends, and at the projections for the next decade and beyond, it is a theme that couldn’t be more important or more urgent.

Practically all countries have implemented the pattern of conventional development that follows a single linear line of economics focusing on growth of output as a function of production factors consisting of natural resources, manpower, capital, skills and technology. Gross world products has increased in the year 2000 almost sevenfold from that in 1950. Consumption of material and services has seen manifold increases as compared to a half century ago.

This paper studies twenty countries plus the European Union to identify good practice examples of governance structures for national sustainable development strategies (NSDS) and to study their effectiveness. Six aspects of governance were considered including: the nature of strategy co-ordination; placement of overall responsibility for the NSDS; legislative underpinning; integration with existing planning and budgeting processes; stakeholder involvement; and linkages with local sustainable development action. Criteria of effectiveness were identified at the outset based on review of an array of existing NSDS guidelines and recent multi-country studies.

The governance dimension of policies for sustainable development, and sustainable development strategies in particular, has received increasing attention during the past few years. This is probably because sustainable development: a. as a concept, or approach, is both soft and overarching, concerning many policy areas, b. "moves" all levels of policy making (local, regional, national, EU, global); and c. "moving towards a more sustainable development" is a process widely understood as a learning process (political in a narrow sense, societal in a wider sense), which touches upon all governance dimensions of democracies.

In modern societies, any heritage is thoroughly regulated when it comes to individual legacies. However, we appear to be less aware of legacies and future burdens that affect society as a whole. Melting polar ice caps, increased global energy consumption, asymmetric poverty and welfare as well as ageing societies indicate that the consequences of our current actions have an increasingly stronger impact on the future.

Various international targets have been set for National Sustainable Development Strategies (NSDS). Agenda 21 first called for all countries to develop an NSDS. Five years later, the 1997 Special Session of the UN General Assembly set a target date of 2002 for formulation and elaboration of NSDS by all countries. The Millennium Development Goals include a target to “integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources”. The Plan of Implementation agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development recommits governments to taking action on NSDS, urging States to “take immediate steps to make progress in the formulation and elaboration of national strategies for sustainable development and begin their implementation by 2005”. Most recently, the renewed EU Sustainable Development Strategy urges that Member States elaborating their first NSDS “should complete these by June 2007” (CEC, 2006).

The Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development called on states to “take immediate steps to make progress in the formulation and elaboration of national strategies for sustainable development and begin their implementation by 2005”. In the preparations for the Johannesburg conference and subsequently, increasing attention has been paid to evaluating National Sustainable Development Strategies (NSDS) to ensure that they are effective in meeting national sustainable development goals and related international commitments. Several approaches have been used for this (OECD, 2005; UNDESA, 2005). This paper reviews experience with these evaluation approaches, with the aim of identifying good practice and presenting recommendations for potential improvement.

There are various interconnected approaches to monitoring and evaluation that are used in Switzerland to oversee the implementation of our sustainability strategy. These approaches are broken down by levels or fields of application.