Accelerating Progress on SDGs Requires Greater Analysis of Countries’ SDG Implementation Policies and Budgets: Implications from Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs)

Inadequate national SDG implementation efforts, particularly policies and budgets, could be an important reason why SDGs are off track. Identification and assessment of these policies and budgets should be a major focus of the SDG follow up and review process, especially the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), in order to strengthen governance of SDGs. However, most existing assessments of VNRs do not systematically identify or analyse national SDG implementation policies and budgets. Instead they focus on other topics such as SDG achievement levels, SDG implementation mechanisms, VNR preparation processes, and to what extent particular topics are discussed. This chapter synthesizes research from existing studies on the VNRs of G20 and ASEAN countries which shows that in fact, many countries, both developed and developing, reported having a large number of SDG implementation policies, and many of them appear to be substantial, at least in name, such as national strategic action plans. They provide much less information on budgets, although presumably most policies have associated budgets. This chapter also shows that most G20 and ASEAN countries include sections in their VNRs which discuss implementation challenges and ways forward to improve implementation. 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. It is recommended that in the VNRs, governments should make more effort to assess the effectiveness of their policies and consider how the policies could be modified or strengthened in order to overcome the challenges and enhance the level of SDG achievement. The scientific community should also put more effort into analysing policies and budgets. This paper also considers the advantages and limitations for policy analysis of the policy and budget information contained in VNRs as well as the feasibility and challenges of assessing policies and budgets, including the potential for developing quantitative policy trackers as recommended by SDSN.