Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development 2019
Empowering People and Ensuring Inclusiveness and Equality
SDG target 17.14 calls on all countries to “enhance policy coherence for sustainable development” as a key means of implementation. According to countries’ Voluntary National Reviews, this presents a major challenge. It requires meaningful collaboration and co-ordinated action across both policy sectors and different levels of government. It also requires balancing short-term priorities with long-term sustainability objectives and taking into account the impact of domestic policies on global well-being outcomes.
The 2019 edition of Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development looks at countries’ efforts to meet this challenge and identifies opportunities for accelerating progress. The third in a series, it shows how integrated and coherent policies, supported by strong institutional and governance mechanisms, can contribute to empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality.
Partnerships for coherence
Drawing on external contributions from the Multi-stakeholder Partnership for Enhancing Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD), which is facilitated by the OECD, this chapter highlights challenges, opportunities and experiences in putting policy coherence for sustainable development into practice. The chapter highlights the need for a more networked approach to assessing PCSD, presenting tools and analytical approaches developed by the members of the PCSD Partnership to ensure a more joined-up, transformational and coherent approach to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Emphasising the need to equip public servants and governments, stakeholders from civil society and the private sector with the skills and tools needed to enhance PCSD, the chapter introduces tools for improving human and institutional capacity to implement the SDGs in a coherent manner at all levels of government. Finally, it outlines the value of following a PCSD approach in implementing the SDGs through two specific case studies.