How Do Governments and Ministers Are Enforcing the Sustainable Development Goals? The Case of the Low-Landscape Low-Impact Countries

SDG progress relies on the effectiveness of governance processes, but these span a wide spectrum. What’s more, the SDGs are not legally binding and every nation, sector and other stakeholder has engaged with them in its own ways. Myriad processes have sprung up, including Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and Voluntary Local Reviews, to track and report progress on the SDGs. These reviews are undertaken by national or local authorities to report on progress and share experiences, successes and lessons learnt in implementing the SDGs.

Many instruments for enabling change are well known. For example, government investments in research and development (R&D), and in subsidies and incentives for sustainable technologies and practices, have brought down the cost of renewable energy hugely; the price of solar cells, for example, has declined 100-fold. But this has taken four decades. If the world is to accelerate progress, governments need to play a more active part, by stimulating innovation, shaping markets and regulating business. Exactly how is determined by local contexts.

Researchers need to examine feedbacks, synergies and trade-offs to help inform coherent strategies that make the best use of available resources and manage unintended side effects. Investment in health and education can improve economic productivity and growth, but they could also increase consumption and cause other problems such as resource demand and pollution, as well as worsening inequalities. Equitable energy-transition programmes typically seek to reduce emissions, provide energy security, access and affordability, and create jobs, but they also need to navigate new potential risks in land use and supply chains.

It might be more politically feasible to switch to net-zero emissions in service-based economies such as Switzerland and Singapore, instead of in economies with large fossil-fuel-based assets. If a clean-energy transition makes it possible for the LMICs to have better access to cheap power, then they might be willing to support it.

One way for governments to shift societies towards a diet that is good for the planet would be to invest first in research and development of cost-effective alternatives, and then use public money to buy them. They should also use market interventions such as taxes and regulations to scale up adoption quickly.

Identifying sweet spots, in which the greatest benefits could be gained with the most-cost-effective solutions, would help to use resources as judiciously as possible. A modelling study in Tanzania9 shows how subsidies for photovoltaics would enable progress on affordable and clean energy, while also supporting other goals — such as education by allowing students to study longer, health by reducing air pollution from solid fuels, and climate action by reducing emissions.

There will be obstacles to overcome. Uptake of electric vehicles might stall if supporting infrastructure is lacking or policy support is withdrawn owing to a backlash from change-averse car makers. More-stringent policies such as phasing out fossil-fuel cars or coal-fired power stations can face resistance from powerful interest groups. Incoming technologies and practices in one SDG area can have downsides in others. Job loss in fossil fuel sectors can affect livelihood in some communities, and mining critical minerals for batteries will hurt the environment.

Human development goals would benefit from scaling up investments in social policies. It is possible for a doubling of spending for public health, social welfare, education, R&D, infrastructure, and governance to lift up more people out of poverty by the year 2030.

Government and businesses should review their structures and processes to find areas whereSDG analyses are needed. Cross-governmental coordination offices and expert units to generate, synthesis, and package specialized evidence are needed for enhancing national systems in LMICs.

National supreme audit institutions in the Netherlands,Lithuania and Tanzania have evaluated and provided recommendations on how to prepare for the implementation of theSDGs. Finland uses several mechanisms to increase accountability, including a national multi-stakeholder sustainable-development commission and an annual citizens’ panel on sustainable development, and is developing an approach to apply the SDGs to all relevant national audits. Government interest and social accountability can be increased by popularizing the goals.

Jolly, who turns 90 next year and still does research at the Institute of Development Studies in Falmer, UK, is part of the second generation of researchers at the UN. He witnessed the Second World War and the effects of poverty which changed many’s lives for the better. Today’s generations are young enough to understand that story.

Two examples of policy influenced by knowledge stand out. The UN helped create the SNA, which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary. The UN recognized the necessity of bringing together disparate work on economic indicators to create an international statistical standard for measuring and comparing economies large and small. Its most famous measure is gross domestic product (GDP) — one number that influences national economic policies, financial markets, political careers and more.

The original HDI ranked countries according to three variables: income, education and life expectancy. To do well in the HDI, nations needed to invest in things beyond those fuelling growth, such as education and health care. In 1996, the HDI’s annual report was taken over by a new director, the present one being Jolly. But the HDI didn’t ‘dethrone’ GDP, as its originators had intended. He told Nature that members of the SNA team did not like an indicator at the time.

Haq convinced the UN to create a new indicator called the HDI, which he developed with Sen and others. Sen later recalled in an interview how Haq told him: “I want you to help me to do an index, which is just as vulgar as GDP, except it will stand for better things.”

According to Jolly, in 1983 he and his colleagues tried to persuade the International Monetary Fund that these policies were hurting children. Two years later, to support their argument, UNICEF, under Jolly’s leadership, commissioned a two-volume study called Adjustment with a Human Face (published in 1987). Despite this and later evidence that adjustment programmes have no positive effects on growth, and can even hamper it (see go.nature.com/3p7jazj), the UN economists failed to sway their counterparts.

And so, with the support of Colombia’s former president Juan Manuel Santos and its then foreign minister María Ángela Holguín, the pair devised a more participatory process, involving researchers, non-governmental organizations and government officials from Colombia and around the world. Together, they advocated for a wider set of goals, which would be based on science and implemented by all countries. The guiding North Star would be the targets to alleviate poverty, along with the environmental, social and economic ones. Critics described the idea as farce, a sheer impossibility, and a pipe dream for a negotiator who didn’t understand the history.

They found other officials who they could work with, and were able to build coalitions to support their objectives. Some politicians demanded political oversight of the scientific work that would be needed to define the goals and targets, but the Colombian team stood firm, insisting on a participatory process that would be led by experts.

Caballero and Londoño’s quest to rally nearly 200 countries to agree to something completely new has echoes of how Canadian diplomat Maurice Strong successfully chaired the 1972 Stockholm environment conference, which resulted in the creation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and of environment ministries around the world. In her 2021 book The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution, UNEP’s historian Maria Ivanova summarizes Strong’s approach to diplomacy as “never to confront, but to co-opt, never to bully but to equivocate, and never to yield”.

Both books demonstrate the roles of individuals and teams in creating change. The interplay of ideas and inspiration from people, evidence from research and the building of coalitions are all necessary to create change.

The UN delegates must prepare their political strategy now because evidence on its own is not likely to change the minds of people.