Integration: the key to implementing the
Sustainable Development Goals

Mark Stafford-Smith, David Griggs,
Owen Gaffney, Farooq Ullah, Belinda
Reyers, Norichika Kanie, Bjorn Stigson,
Paul Shrivastava, et al.
Sustainability Science
ISSN 1862-4065
Sustain Sci
DOI 10.1007/s11625-016-0383-3

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Sustain Sci
DOI 10.1007/s11625-016-0383-3

SPECIAL FEATURE: OVERVIEW ARTICLE

Sustainability Science and Implementing the Sustainable
Development Goals

Integration: the key to implementing the Sustainable Development
Goals
Mark Stafford-Smith1,2 • David Griggs3,4 • Owen Gaffney2,5 • Farooq Ullah2,6 •Belinda Reyers2,5 • Norichika Kanie7 • Bjorn Stigson2,8 • Paul Shrivastava9,10 •Melissa Leach2,11 • Deborah O’Connell1

Received: 23 December 2015 / Accepted: 6 June 2016 The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract On 25 September, 2015, world leaders met at theUnited Nations in New York, where they adopted theSustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals and 169
targets set out an agenda for sustainable development for
all nations that embraces economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Now, the agenda
moves from agreeing the goals to implementing and ultimately achieving them. Across the goals, 42 targets focus
on means of implementation, and the final goal, Goal 17, isentirely devoted to means of implementation. However,these implementation targets are largely silent about
interlinkages and interdependencies among goals. This
leaves open the possibility of perverse outcomes andunrealised synergies. We demonstrate that there must be
greater attention on interlinkages in three areas: acrosssectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, and transport),

across societal actors (local authorities, government
agencies, private sector, and civil society), and between
and among low, medium and high income countries.
Drawing on a global sustainability science and practiceperspective, we provide seven recommendations toimprove these interlinkages at both global and national
levels, in relation to the UN’s categories of means of
implementation: finance, technology, capacity building,
trade, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data,
monitoring and accountability.
Keywords Sustainable Development Goals  Means of
implementation  Integration  Trade-offs and synergies Governance  Human well-being

Introduction
Handled by Joanne Kauffman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) (retired), France.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of thisarticle (doi:10.1007/s11625-016-0383-3) contains supplementarymaterial, which is available to authorized users.
& Mark Stafford-Smithmark.staffordsmith@csiro.au
1

CSIRO, PO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia

2

Nations met in September 2015 at the UN in New York andcommitted to the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)—17 global goals with 169 targets—to be met by
2030 (UN 2015). Whatever the failings of the SDGs—the7

Keio University, 5322 Endoh, Fujisawa,
Kanagawa 252-0882, Japan

8

Stigson Partners, Herrgårdsbacken 5, 131 50 Saltsjö-Duvnäs,
SwedenFuture Earth (FutureEarth.org), Montreal, Canada

93

Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, VIC,
Australia

Future Earth, Suite 1020, 1250 Guy Street, Montreal,QC H3H 2T4, Canada

10

4Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

Warwick University, Coventry, UK

11

Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex,
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK

5

Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University,Kräftriket 2B, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

6

Stakeholder Forum, Unit 60, 49 Effra Road,
London SW2 1BZ, UK

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Lancet rather harshly described them as ‘‘fairy tales,
dressed in the bureaucratese of intergovernmental narcissism, adorned with the robes of multilateral paralysis, andpoisoned by the acid of nation-state failure’’ (Horton2015)—getting universal agreement on a defined set ofgoals and targets for global sustainability and humandevelopment is a remarkable achievement. However, these
universal goals, the result of what the UN has described as
the largest consultation in its history, will amount to little
unless governments, and many non-government actors
mobilize effectively to ensure that they are actually
implemented.
As a framework, the SDGs extend the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in many ways, butparticularly by seeking to profoundly link the social, economical, and environmental aspects of goals. This in turnimplies linking across time—ensuring that the short-term
achievement of improved human well-being does not occur
at the cost of undermining well-being in the long term bydamaging the underpinning social and environmental capital on which our global life support system depends. How
is this to be assured?
Across the 16 substantive goals, 42 targets focus on‘‘means of implementation’’, albeit somewhat unevenly(Tables 1, S1), and the final goal (17) is entirely devoted tothese. Spreading implementation targets throughout thegoals encourages systemic implementation. However, isthis enough? We suggest not. The implementation targets
are largely silent about interlinkages and interdependencies
among goals, regardless of their ambition to be ‘‘universal,
indivisible, and interlinked’’ (clause 71). This leaves open
the possibility of perverse outcomes, where achieving
human development in the short term may undermine thecapacity of the global life support system (Griggs et al.
2013) to support these advances in human well-being in thelong term; or, indeed, where environmental interventions
undermine the rights and well-being of certain socialgroups (Leach 2015). For example, promoting increased
consumption to alleviate poverty may lead to the failure ofother goals, such as the sustainable management of water.
Uncoordinated action may create internal conflicts, such as
subsidies for both renewable and non-renewable fuelsources, or missed synergies, for example, where appropriately targeted investment in renewable energy reduces
emissions, but it could also reduce pollution, improve
human health, and increase equality.
We suggest that there must be greater attention on theseinterlinkages in three areas:••

across sectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, technology, and transport);
across societal actors (local authorities, government
agencies, private sector, and civil society); and123•

between and among low, medium, and high income
countries.

Here, we draw on the global sustainability science andpractice perspective represented by Future Earth1 to provide seven recommendations to improve these interlinkages, related to the UN’s seven categories of means of
implementation in SDG 17: finance, technology, capacity
building, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data,
monitoring and accountability. In practice, much implementation will occur at national and local levels, so weconclude by suggesting how these seven issues might besupported at that level.
Finance: link across sectors and countries throughincentives for the long-term investment in earlystage market development in lower income
countries, particularly for products and services
that support sustainable development
If the SDGs are to succeed, they must promote an
inclusive approach to growth, and mobilize innovative
sources of financing while phasing out investment inunsustainable activities in all countries. In general, theseaims can be promoted by approaches such as Aviva
Investors’ Six Sustainable Financing Tests (Aviva
Investors, Stakeholder Forum 2015). However, businesses from high income countries still mostly avoid
investment in building the business capacity of lower
income countries, even where these are politically stable.
Incentivising such long-term private investment fromhigh income countries towards lower income countries
requires pools of ‘‘patient capital’’—capital investmentthat measures returns not on a quarterly or annual basis,but rather over decades and more, mandated for lower
income nations.
For example, AgDevCo is a UK-based non-profit organization that invests patient capital into early stage
agribusinesses in Africa (http://www.agdevco.com/). It
currently invests a pool of $100 million through locallymanaged subsidiaries in five countries in sub-SaharanAfrica (Mozambique, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania). Its projects reduce rural poverty directly and indirectly by raising agricultural productivity and incomes andcreating employment opportunities for rural communities.
Similar links between countries and among actors need to
be promoted to create businesses focused on locallyappropriate products and services for sustainable development, with potential for export. This requires incentives(e.g., tax breaks) or regulatory changes (e.g., to create ‘‘B-1

http://www.FutureEarth.org.

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Table 1 Count of ‘‘means of
implementation’’ listed undereach substantive goal (1–16) inthe seven categories defined by
SDG 17 (see Table S1 forcategorisation as assessed byauthors; abbreviations follow
the section titles in the main text
following)

SDG#

FinanceTechnology

Capacity

Trade‘‘Systemic issues’’
Policy

1

1

2

1

3

1

4

2

1
1
1
1

1

1
1
2

2

2
1

9

1

10

2

11
12

1

13

1

14
15

2
3

6
8

Data, etc.

257Partnerships

1
1

3

1

1

1
1

1
1

1
2
1

1

1
1

1
1

1

1

2

1
1

16

1

1

2

Total

13

11

11

6

14

5

1

17

5

3

1

3

3

2

2

Corporations’—http://www.bcorporation.net) in developed
countries.
Technology: link across actors and countries
by promoting an integrated global innovation
system for sustainable development knowledge
and for technology exchanges basedon environmental, economic, and cultural affinities
In the SDGs, the technology narrative is mainly framedaround transferring technologies from ‘developed’ to ‘lessdeveloped’ nations. However, these may be inappropriate
and in some cases delay the creation of an equitable local
economy, or suppress opportunities for lower income
countries to leapfrog western development pathways thathave been found wanting (e.g., Berkhout et al. 2010).
Timor Leste is a case in point—it experienced major
deterioration and destruction of its energy infrastructure in
the period leading up to independence in 1999, so that the
new government naturally prioritised getting power to its
citizens. However, a recent joint report with the WorldBank (Ministry of Finance and World Bank 2015) concludes that the initial decisions to invest in fossil fuel-based
power stations significantly delayed access to power for
many citizens, and simple changes in tariff regimes would
enable greater equity and efficiency in access, as well as
lower emissions. Timor Leste has many opportunities forrenewable power supplies, including small-scale distributed hydropower, wind, and solar systems that may not

only deliver the needed energy but also enhance self-reliance, spread risk, and allow the diffusion of locallyappropriate technologies. The country has a renewables
strategy and could usefully access the experience of middle
and high income countries with similar environments.
More broadly, implementing the SDGs will require an
agile and integrated global innovation system, consciously
connecting regions across the globe, linking actors inresearch and society, and facilitating co-production andtransfer of locally appropriate knowledge and technology.
An emerging example is Brazil’s strategy for south–southtechnology and knowledge transfer, described by The
Economist in 2010 as a ‘global model in waiting’2 basedaround climatic, cultural, and linguistic ties to Africa andBrazil’s world-leading technical expertise in agriculturalresearch. The opportunity is to develop a much stronger
focus on facilitating the development of sustainable
development friendly technologies and processes in lower
income nations, with the support of higher income nations
that have most environmental and cultural affinities thatmight also then be a trading target for these innovations.
This must occur through co-design processes—that is,ensuring that all relevant stakeholders are involved inlower and higher income countries and their businesssectors, in all the stages of the activities.

2

http://www.economist.com/node/16592455 (‘‘Speak softly andcarry a blank cheque’’, 15 July 2010).

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Capacity building: links across sectors promoted
through ensuring that new technologies are used
to train all sectors of society in systems approaches
to global sustainability

Trade: linking across countries and sectors
by ensuring that trade systems at all levels promotetrade in appropriate products and services
for sustainable development

The goal of capacity building is to provide the long-termfoundation for transformation. While this is often location
specific, at a fundamental level, it will require all sectors inall countries to acquire new skillsets and toolkits for sustainability; this is generally noted in target 4.7,3 but
specifically requires training and education in systems
approaches to solutions, transdisciplinary initiatives, andco-design. The world needs, as the STEPS Centre puts it(Leach et al. 2012), a new generation and category ofsustainability professionals who can broker between global, national, and local issues, between research and use,and between biophysical and social aspects of sustainability; notably, this need is as acute in higher as in lower
income countries. At present, university teaching tends todrive towards specialisation, whereas all universities
should integrate systems thinking and global sustainability
into all undergraduate courses. More postgraduate courses
in global sustainability are also needed, such as the 2-year
Global Masters in Development Practice managed by
Columbia University, which is designed as an alternative toan MBA and is now offered at more than 22 universities in
16 countries on 6 continents (http://mdpglobal.org/faq).
However, the world is on the cusp of a revolution thatwill see complete global internet coverage within a decade,well within the lifetime of the SDGs. There is no longer
any need to rely on retrofitting inadequate institutions forthis training, as suitably motivated people will be able toaccess training on their mobile devices: massive open
online courses (MOOCs) related to sustainability andplanetary boundaries are already available from the WorldBank and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network,
enrolling tens of thousands of people. This development
avoids costly retrofitting of training institutions and can bemobilized to reset the world views of unlimited growth andthe myopic focus on GDP often held by political leaders
and business executives. This revolution should also beharnessed to support greater cross fertilisation of informal
learning about sustainability, for example, through communities of practice, learning by doing, and reflexive
learning cultures (O’Connell et al. 2013).

Current trade policies, systems, and liberalisation often
work against the poor and sustainability, even though when
trade systems are designed with sustainable development in
mind, they can boost incomes, tackle poverty andinequality, and deliver a lasting impact (Fairtrade Foundation 2015). Delivering the SDG commitment to trade
policy coherence demands review and reform of domestic
policies with an impact on trade, together with new
approaches and accountabilities to ensure that trade
agreements—bilateral, regional, and multilateral—work to
support poverty alleviation and sustainability goals. This
has resulted in calls for integrated initiatives around trade,
where trade, food, business, and other areas of policy alignto support poverty reduction, human rights, and the environment. For example, Tipping and Wolfe (2015) outline
trade-related elements ranging from improving access tomarkets for small-scale producers to strengthening themultilateral trading system, and include commitments toreform of perverse subsidies to agriculture, fisheries andfossil fuels, as well as ensuring that regional trade andinvestment agreements are coherent with sustainable
development objectives.
Of course, trade rules and other ways of influencing
flows and investments that affect sustainability can varyacross a spectrum from formal trade agreements to standards and labels and reporting mechanisms. As an example
among the latter, the Carbon Disclosure Project4 essentiallyuses investor decisions in response to different levels of
disclosure to drive change and a gradually improving
quality of carbon accounting. However, there is a particular
opportunity: global markets are increasingly exposed to a‘green race’ (e.g., Fankhauser et al. 2013) that will favour
resource efficient, low polluting products, and services thatare ‘‘sustainable development friendly’’. National priorities
and trade rules should explicitly favour innovation andtrade in such products and services that manage the links
between sectors. This is increasingly happening for wellknown trade-offs, such as the need for energy efficienttechnologies that can deliver more energy to consumers
whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Rogelj
et al. 2013), which can be explicitly supported by policy
instruments such as renewable energy targets without trying to pick specific ‘‘winner’’ technologies.
However, there are many opportunities in other interactions lurking among the SDGs, such as water efficiency
in industrial processing, nutrient use efficiency in small-3

Target 4.7: by 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge
and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including,among others, through education for sustainable development andsustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of aculture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciationof cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable
development.

123

4

https://www.cdp.net/en-US/Pages/HomePage.aspx.

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scale agriculture, other aspects of the interactions in thefood–energy–water nexus, ecosystem-based management
opportunities for local livelihoods, and health benefits fromreducing air pollution. Griggs et al. (2014) identify avariety of these points of creative tension, but a systematic
analysis is needed, so that these can be promoted (or atleast not inhibited) by world trade rules. Trade rules could
also be nuanced to promote the entry of lower income
countries into new markets around these types of products
and services. For example, Equiterre5 is a Quebec-based
fair trade organization that, with the help of citizens,organizations and governments, develops projects in sustainable community-supported agriculture, transportation,and fair trade in coffee. Encouraging third sector organizations committed to fair and sustainable trade can havethe dual effect of increasing capacity for such trade, anddelivering surveillance over unfair trade practices. This lastpoint is important, as the reality of national and commercial interests in trade negotiations is that fair outcomes do
not occur without scrutiny.
Policy and institutional coherence: link sectors
and actors through strong global and nationaloversight of integrated development plans
A lesson from the MDGs was that individual UN agencies
took charge of individual targets and implemented themwith limited regard for other (particularly environmental)
targets. A significant policy innovation with the SDGs is
the creation of the UN’s High-Level Political Forum(HLPF), which will meet annually at the ministerial level,
and every fourth year at the heads of state level. The HLPF
is tasked with ensuring the integration of the three
dimensions of sustainable development in a holistic andcross-sectoral manner at all levels. It is meant to havehigher authority than similar previous institutions at theUN, to coordinate, secure interlinkages, mobilize resources
for implementation, and monitor progress (Bernstein et al.
2014).
At national scales, arguably the scale at which implementation and achievement of the SDGs will be mostcritical, the SDGs will depend upon alignment and integration between national targets, strategies, and plans for
implementation, as well as with national and local delivery
programs. This level is thus critical to producing truepolicy coherence and linkages across sectors. Policy
instruments, such as national sustainable development
strategies, national development plans, and green economy
plans, can work to link across sectors and actors. For
example, national sustainable development strategies inFinland, Germany, and Wales have adopted cross-cutting,5

http://www.equiterre.org/.

integrated approaches (using concepts such as circular
economies) to delivering sustainable development (Stakeholder Forum 2015). Similarly, national and local development plans in some countries, such as China and South
Africa (Li et al. 2015), and aspects of federal planning in
the United States (Schaefer et al. 2015), are transcending
their typical focus on economic development to open up
opportunities for cross-sectoral engagement and implementation, linking areas such as water, soil, and extreme
events, and biodiversity conservation. Such planningapproaches need to become universal.
Even if plans are well integrated, they may be weakly
implemented. Integrated implementation can be facilitatedby institutions such as National Planning Commissions
which bring together public and private actors, as well ascivil society and academia, to forge collaborative multisectoral implementation. Appointing a ministry in chargeof sustainable development above all other ministries, as
has occurred in France and Mongolia, is another way forward; these must have the buy-in of, or influence over, thenormally pre-eminent ministries, such as finance. No one
actor can secure integrated implementation of the three
dimensions of sustainable development; for example,
business practice can be more sustainable when working incollaboration with an NGO, scientists, and the public sector(Kanie et al. 2013; Reyers et al. 2015). In particular, thesearrangements need to provide the platform for a joined-up
approach in civil society too, which can be as fragmented
and siloed as government ministries; they also need to beechoed down to local levels to engage all of society.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships: link across sectors
and actors by encouraging widespread adoptionof the SDGs as a legitimate Common Standard
package
In UN-speak, ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’ are voluntary associations between different actors, such as civilsociety organizations, the private sector, philanthropic
organizations, and international organizations. Increasingemphasis is being placed on these partnerships to participate in developing and implementing policy for sustainable
development. However, there is growing evidence that
their success in developing and implementing policy hinges on engaging the right set of stakeholders for the issue,
as well as sustained funding, and organisational learning(Pattberg and Widerberg 2015).
Another key issue identified by Pattberg and Widerberg(2015) is ‘stringent goal setting’ across actors. In thisregard, the SDGs could drive innovation not only globally,
but at many other levels. For example, some businessgroups in the Global Compact Network in Japan andelsewhere see the SDGs becoming a Common Standard for123Sustain Sci

corporate social responsibility. The set of goals provides alegitimate Common Standard that could be applied globally and introduced to certification schemes that link theprivate sector with policy and consumers. In Australia,
some local and state governments (e.g., Victorian
Government 2015) believe that the SDGs provide a new,coherent framework for reporting on sustainability andhuman development. This kind of thinking could pave theway towards new forms of public–private partnerships(PPPs) between public and private sectors. However, theseapproaches will fail unless some priority is given to theintegrated nature of the SDGs in these standards andpartnerships, so that targets are not cherry picked but are
adopted as a package—in particular, that is, so the shortterm benefits for human well-being are not unduly prioritised over the long-term ones.

countries should be supported to collect at least thisfocused set of essential variables (UN SDSN 2015). This
will support the tracking of cross scale, and aggregate,regional and global trends, which should be explored andpromulgated through the Global Sustainable Development
Report—the annual reporting mechanism to the HLPF.
These would also be critical variables to encompass inmodelling which will be crucial to assess whether progressis adding up to global sustainability and human well-being,
to learn about how to do sustainable development and toforesight sustainable futures to backcast potential development pathways (e.g., proposed World in 2050 project7).
This is an urgent task for the research community, such asthat represented by Future Earth,8 in conjunction withactors across sectors and countries.

Data, monitoring, and accountability: link
across countries, sectors, and actors by developing
a concise set of fully integrated indicators (‘essential
sustainable development variables’)Implementing the means of implementation

A global indicator framework of over 230 indicators was
agreed in March 20166, which will be challenging to
implement and monitor. Yet, our knowledge of complex
systems has enabled the distillation of essential variables
which capture major dimensions of change in various
systems—for example, essential climate variables andessential biodiversity variables (e.g., Bojinski et al. 2014;
Pereira et al. 2013), and more recently, the essential
dimensions of change relevant to sustainable development,such as planetary boundaries and related frameworks(Leach et al. 2013; Steffen et al. 2015). These pave the way
to identifying a set of ‘‘essential sustainable development
variables’’ that define a core minimum set of social, environmental and economic measurements for monitoring
while at the same time supporting a more integrated set ofindicators for tracking and communicating progress. Suchan integrated suite of indicators that link across sectors
could be adapted and used by multiple actors (e.g., other
UN conventions, the Common Standards discussed above),and could be aggregated across scales. However, theirdevelopment and testing is a significant research undertaking which should be expedited but will not be ready in
2016.
Given significant differences in monitoring resources
between countries, developing such a core minimum set ofmeasurements for monitoring will help countries, cities,
and the private sector to focus on guaranteeing this minimum data set and collection capacity. Lower income

The world is moving into a new era of global governancefor development and the environment, built more on trustand shared values, and on objectives, and less on legallybinding frameworks. Research indicates that public
commitments, either at an individual level, or national
level, can drive change (Biermann and Pattberg 2008;
Victor et al. 1998). However, on this scale, questions
remain about how successful this can be, particularly
given the influence of multinational corporations andglobal financial markets.
Therefore, globally, the means of implementation needthemselves to be implemented in an integrated way. The
foregoing sections identify aspects of integration in eachmeans, but the whole set also need to be implemented in acoordinated way (Fig. 1), so that, for example, the reduced
set of essential variables that might be defined under thedata means of implementation, then flow through to help
define the set of Standards under the partnerships means,
and these in turn frame the priorities for incentives in the
trade means. The agenda needs not only to pay attention to
implementing the substantive goals (SDGs 1–16) in integrated ways, but also to ensuring that the means of
implementation in Goal 17 and the other goals are themselves an integrated undertaking. How this can be achievedin a coordinated way is clearly a challenging question of
global governance, in which the HLPF needs to address.
In practice though, each country has responsibility andsovereignty for its own development and the implementation of the SDGs, within an enabling international economic and governance environment. All member states are
76

http://unstats.un.org/sdgs/files/report/2016/secretary-general-sdgreport-2016–EN.pdf.

123

http://unsdsn.org/blog/news/2015/03/13/the-world-in-2050-pathways-towards-a-sustainable-future/.
8
http://www.FutureEarth.org.

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Capacity building: universal
literacy in systems
approaches

Technology: integrated
global innovaon system forSD products and services

Data and monitoring:
essenal sustainable
development variables

Governance: integrated
development plans overseen
by high level ministries

Partnerships: focused around
SDGs as Common Standards
packageFinance: support for SD productand service market development
in lower income countries

Trade: facilitated trade in
products and services for SD
Fig. 1 The seven categories of means of implementation in Goal 17
need to form a virtuous system, where all of them address integration
issues in a coherent and self-reinforcing manner [for example, theessential variables would be applied through the Common Standards
package which can then identify areas in which trade should befacilitated; finance should support technology innovation in sustainable development (SD) products in lower income countries which canthen be a focus for trade]. Some key example issues are illustrated
here

encouraged to develop ‘‘ambitious national responses’’(UN 2015), but little guidance is provided as to hownations could keep an eye on integration whilst doing so. In
the absence of this, there is a high risk that nations will‘cherry-pick’ the goals that align with their priorities ortheir data collection systems, and fail to address the others
that are awkward; in particular, environmental goals andtargets may continue to be largely ignored or put in the toohard basket. Instead, it is essential that nations recognisethat acting well is in their own self-interest: that short term
gains in their national human well-being could be readily
undermined in the long term if this trade-off is not reconciled at national and global levels. The following specificseven actions, based on the foregoing discussion and universally implemented by nations within their own spheresof influence, would help to stimulate the integrated
approach that sustainable development requires, in particular promoting effective linkages among sectors, actors,
and countries, and across time frames.

•

•

•

•
•

Legislative and regulatory incentives for ‘patient’capital, particularly to be invested in lower income
countries
A partnership approach between lower and higher
income countries to co-produce knowledge, technologies, and processes for sustainability, bearing in mind
that no country is truly ‘developed’ in terms ofsustainable development.
Commitment to ensuring systems thinking is embeddedin all levels of education
Active support for trade in locally appropriate sustainable development products and services••

Integrated sustainable development plans that enforce
linkages among fragmented sectors and promote policy
coherence.
Political leadership on sustainable development at thehighest levels of government, for example, in a
dedicated powerful ministry or at a supra-ministerial
level, such as the executive branch
Integrated SDG indicators supported by ‘‘essential SD
variables’’ as a common reporting standard thatencourages or requires actors to work together.

Conclusion
The world has rightly paid attention to achieving an integrated agenda in the SDGs, however imperfect thisachievement may have been in this first iteration of such atransformative agenda. However, this effort has focusedparticularly on integration among the substantive goals andtargets. Vital as this is, here, we focus on the need forsimilar attention to obtaining a systems view and integrated
approach to the means of implementation, scattered in an
imbalanced way (Table 1) through all the goals andspecifically in Goal 17.
In each category of means identified in Goal 17, it ispossible to see how an approach could integrate andcoordinate, or silo and fragment, just as is the case among
the substantive targets. Here, we have presented the casefor integrative thinking in the means of implementation
themselves, and provided examples of how this could beachieved at global and national levels (Table 2). In the123Sustain Sci
Table 2 Summary of key ‘‘means of implementation’’ and related recommendations
Means ofimplementation

Key challenge

Key links
neededRecommendations
Globally

Nationally

1. Finance

Private sector fails to invest in
sustainable development longterm, especially in lower
income countries

Sectors,
countries

Establish incentives for long-term
investment in early stage market
development in lower income
countries, particularly for products
and services that support
sustainable development

Legislative and regulatory incentives
for ‘patient’ capital, particularly to
be invested in lower income
countries

2. Technology

Fixation on transferring
technologies from ‘developed’to ‘less developed’ countries

Actors,countries

Promote an integrated global
innovation system for sustainable
development knowledge and fortechnology exchanges based on
environmental, economic, andcultural affinities

A partnership approach between
lower and higher income countries
to co-produce knowledge,
technologies and processes forsustainability

3. Capacity
building

Lack of deep understanding ofsystems and narrative ofindefinite material growth

Sectors

Ensure that new technologies areused to train all sectors of society insystems approaches to global
sustainability

Commitment to ensuring systems
thinking is embedded in all thelevels of education

4. Trade

Trade policies that disadvantage
lower income countries andnew entrants to sustainability
markets

Countries,
sectors

Ensure that trade systems at all levels
promote trade in appropriate
products and services forsustainable development

Active support for trade in locallyappropriate sustainable
development products and services

5. Policy andinstitutional
coherence

Incentives that drive a silomentality and failure to havehigh leadership on sustaining
long-term human well-being

Sectors,
actorsStrong global and national oversightof integrated development plans

Integrated sustainable development
plans that enforce linkages amongfragmented sectors and promote
policy coherence.
Political leadership on sustainable
development at the highest levelsof government, for example in a
dedicated powerful ministry or the
executive branch

6. Multistakeholder
partnerships

Lack of discrimination about
which stakeholders need topartner for different purposes,
and a common purpose topartner for

Sectors,
actorsEncourage widespread adoption of
the SDGs as a legitimate CommonStandard package

7. Data,monitoring
andaccountability

Over-lengthy list of indicators tomonitor, with inadequate focus
on critical interactions

Countries,
sectors,
actorsDevelop a concise set of fully
integrated indicators (‘essential
sustainable development
variables’)end, it is up to nations to implement the SDGs withsuitable attention to local circumstances; however, there
are some key actions that all nations could undertake intheir own ways which would help ensure that implementation is coordinated, and provide a far greater chanceof success in the lofty and vital ambitions of the post2015 agenda.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://crea
tivecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide alink to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.

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