High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development - Side Event
United Nations, New York, 18 July 2017

How can governments get organised to reach the ambition embodied in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals? 

This event provided a focused discussion on how governments can tackle some of the governance challenges that are inherent to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. 

The presentation of country experiences enabled a peer-to-peer exchange on how institutions such as the centre of government (Prime Ministers’ and President’s offices) are dealing with the governance challenge presented by the SDGs. 

What are the main governance challenges?

Achieving progress on the Goals will require governments to work across policy areas. This is no easy task. The obstacles to joined-up government are well known: 

• Immediate economic & social pressures often crowd out longer term strategic policy initiatives
  
  
• Public budgets & accountability systems are usually not aligned across multiple levels of government. 
  
  
• An unprecedented range of public & private actors will need to be consulted policy formulation and implementation
  
  
• A need for prioritisation & negotiation involving all parts of government, businesses and civil society.

Policy Research and Knowledge Sharing Project

The High Level Political Forum side event also launched a new Policy Research and Knowledge Sharing project on the institutional mechanisms that countries can consider as they set out to implement the SDGs.

Documents

• Agenda
• Summary report and next steps

The side event is co-sponsored by the Governments of Sweden and Mexico, along with the African Peer Review Mechanism, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the OECD.