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UN DESA Policy Brief No. 171: Leveraging Critical Energy Transition Minerals: policy pathways for sustainable development
Developing countries with extensive critical energy transition mineral reserves have the potential to harness these resources for economic growth and sustainable development. However, doing so involves significant economic, environmental and social risks. Strong governance, strategic national policies and effective international cooperation are essential to maximize sustainable development benefits and avoid the so-called resource curse.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 170 (Special Issue): Reimagining financing for the SDGs - from filling gaps to shaping finance
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are dangerously off track. The prevailing “gap-filling” approach to SDG financing has proven inadequate, failing to deliver the scale, impact or equity required. Global efforts remain fixated on mobilizing additional financing rather than embedding the SDGs at the core of economic and financial systems. Blended finance, often heralded as a silver bullet, has fallen short: public resources dominate blended deals, often de-risking private initiative in lower-risk, lower-impact projects. To redirect this trajectory, the international financing architecture must be reshaped around the SDGs.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 168: Net Wealth Taxes: How they can help fight inequality and fund sustainable development
Ensuring effective taxation of wealth is a tool to address inequality, increase progressivity in the tax system, and raise domestic revenues to finance sustainable development. This policy brief outlines the advantages and disadvantages of net wealth taxes, lays out some policy instruments that help in their administration, and explains why and how international tax cooperation can aid countries in successfully levying net wealth taxes.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 167: Leveraging population trends for a more sustainable and inclusive future: Insights from World Population Prospects 2024
Understanding how population trends are likely to unfold in the short, medium and long terms is critical for achieving a more inclusive, prosperous and sustainable future. This policy brief provides an overview of some of the main findings of the World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results with the aim of helping countries prepare for population sizes, age structures and spatial distributions that may differ appreciably from those of their recent past.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 165: What assets and innovations can governments mobilize to transform the public sector and achieve the SDGs?
Through investment in transformative public-sector change programmes, government agencies and organizations and personnel can unlock their capabilities to go beyond merely responding to disruptions. Fostering transformation and adaptive mindsets will be key to enabling them to anticipate and effectively address the pressing challenges within their societies, even in complex and dynamic environments.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 164: The integrated nature of the Sustainable Development Goals as a lever for trust, institutional resilience and innovation
Renewed efforts in enhancing policy coherence are required to leverage synergies at different levels and unleash the transformations needed to achieve the SDGs. However, public entities face challenges in identifying and leveraging SDG interdependencies and translating relevant plans into action. There are actionable ways to support integration and address existing barriers to unlock SDG progress in a way that contributes to building trust, enhancing resilience and advancing innovation.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 163: Policy Choices for Leaving No One Behind (LNOB): Overview From 2023 SDG Summit Commitments
Prioritizing leaving no one behind (LNoB), 31 countries have introduced new policies and commitments aimed at eradicating poverty, enhancing human capital, addressing uneven access to basic necessities, improving decision-making processes on sustainable development and ensuring no country or locality is left behind.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 162: Multilevel Governance for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Effective climate action requires multilevel governance and coordination across national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as with non-state actors, to maximize synergies and ensure inclusive, coherent approaches. By integrating equity into governance arrangements at all levels, global, national and local stakeholders can foster a more effective and sustainable response to climate change.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 161: On the path to an older population: Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend in the least developed countries
While many least developed countries (LDCs) are still experiencing persistently high fertility and rapid population growth, they have also begun to experience progressive population ageing. Preparing for population ageing in LDCs will be critical for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that no one is left behind. Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend will provide an opportunity for these countries to develop economically before their populations become much older.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 160: The Dynamics of Poverty - Creating Resilience to Sustain Progress
Progress in reducing poverty is fragile. Covid-19 and the growing threats from climate change and conflict serve as a reminder that many people are still one misfortune away from falling into poverty. Supporting people to escape poverty is a first step towards its eradication.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 158: How can we accelerate transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Insights from the 2023 Global Sustainable Development Report
Progress on the SDGs requires integrated approaches operating at a systemic level that address multiple goals simultaneously. Interventions toward progress on a given target must also generate positive synergies with other targets, while resolving tradeoffs. Transformative change does not follow a linear path, and policy needs will vary across contexts and phases of transformation. Policies should respond to impediments unique to each phase – emergence, acceleration, or stabilization.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 157: How Can Governments Strengthen Their Relationships with Society to Meet the Sustainable Development Goals? Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked innovation and experimentation in public institutions. Institutional and policy changes can improve Governments’ relationships with other actors and highlight opportunities to accelerate SDG progress. Renewed social contracts, built on trust, are crucial if societies are to meet today’s compounding challenges, better respond to future crises, and achieve the SDGs.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 156: Enhancing Public Institutions’ Risk-informed Communication to address Multifaceted Crises for Disaster Risk Reduction, Resilience and Climate Action
The ability to provide accurate, timely, and reliable information to the public and responders in crises situations is central to risk-informed communication. This brief seeks to examine how to strengthen risk-informed communication for addressing multifaceted crises management, disaster risk reduction, and climate action. It identifies key challenges for strengthening government institutions that are responsible for effective communication, provides guidance on how to integrate risk-informed communication strategies into disaster management and proposes policy recommendations.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 155: Accelerating middle-income countries’ progress towards sustainable development
Many MICs require international support to address current and long-term challenges. Eligibility criteria that rely only on income per capita limit available support – including access to concessional finance – without accounting for MICs’ multidimensional development needs.
UN DESA Policy Brief Special Issue: Financing the Sustainable Development Goals through mission-oriented development banks
There is an urgent need for channeling long-term risk-tolerant finance towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. The paper argues that National Development Banks (NDBs) and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) can play a crucial role in mobilizing the needed capital.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 153: India overtakes China as the world’s most populous country
Taking account of future population trends in national development planning is essential for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular, those related to poverty, food security, health, education, gender equality, decent work, inequality, urbanization and the environment, and for ensuring that no one is left behind.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 152: Population, education and sustainable development: interlinkages and select policy implications
The demographic transition, including decreased fertility and child dependency, brings opportunities to boost the human capital of young people and adults alike.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 146: Why safe, orderly and regular migration matters for sustainable development
Respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, benefit migrants and countries alike. Addressing the adverse drivers and structural factors that hinder people from building and maintaining sustainable livelihoods in their own countries and communities can reduce the pressure to migrate.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 144: Moving Beyond GDP and Achieving Our Common Agenda with Natural Capital Accounting
With the climate and biodiversity crises raging, Our Common Agenda stresses the urgent need to go beyond GDP, including through country implementation of the SEEA.
UN DESA Policy Brief No. 141: A just green transition: concepts and practice so far
A globally just transition requires international support for developing countries that takes into account their’ realities, capacities, and priorities. Greening measures and strategies shouldn’t push people in other countries behind.