Building Blocks of Transformative SDG Follow-up and Review: A Methodology

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda) and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were intended to motivate governments to transform conventional development patterns (United Nations, 2015). However, the lack of progress on the SDG suggests the national institutions and processes supporting this transformation may not be fit for those purposes (Allen, Metternicht, and Wiedmann 2018; UN 2024). An area with the potential to drive transformation is national follow-up and review (FUR).  

A reason that national FUR could support transformation is that it involves not only the monitoring of SDG progress. Rather it also requires using those assessments for increasingly ambitious cycles of goal/target-setting and implementation efforts (Persson, Weitz, and Nilsson 2016). While the Voluntary National Review (VNR) Handbook provides step-by-step FUR guidance (UN 2025), it offers limited insights into how to make relevant FUR institutions and processes transformative. The purpose of this paper is to offer national policymakers and other interested stakeholders with a methodology for FUR that can support transformation.  

The proposed FUR methodology consists of ten building blocks with corresponding practices and enablers. The building blocks outline institutions and processes that can drive transformation as part of the SDG FUR. Meanwhile, the practices provide concrete descriptions of how some countries have made these building blocks actionable. The enablers offer insights on the broader set of conditions that countries need to support these practices.