Accelerating Progress on the SDGs: Implications from Voluntary National Reviews

Inadequate national implementation efforts, particularly policies and budgets, could be an important reason why the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are off track. Identification and assessment of policies and budgets should be a major focus of the SDG follow-up and review process, especially the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), to strengthen SDG governance. However, most existing assessments of VNRs do not systematically identify or analyze national SDG implementation policies and budgets. This chapter synthesizes research from existing studies on the VNRs of the Group of 20 (G20) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries that shows many countries, both developed and developing, reported having a large number of SDG implementation policies, but they provide much less information on budgets. Therefore, insufficient progress on SDGs is probably not due to a lack of policies. Rather, the policies may be insufficient, not well designed, not well funded, or not well implemented.