Summary of Capacity-building Needs to Advance Sustainable Development Planning and Implementation

The report identifies four core areas for improving sustainable development (SD) planning: multistakeholder participation, integrated vertical planning across government levels, cross-sectoral policy integration, and monitoring, evaluation, and reporting (MER). Across Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, the report finds a prevalence of 'silo' sectoral planning and a lack of institutional frameworks for stakeholder engagement. It argues for the creation of national SD councils chaired by heads of state and the adoption of 'glocal' planning to align global goals with local implementation. Key capacity gaps include a lack of data for evidence-based policy, poor coordination between governmental and non-governmental agencies, and limited technical skills for information management at subnational levels.

• Regional experts envision a 2030 governance model where a dedicated national sustainable development council or similar body, chaired by a President or Prime Minister, coordinates multistakeholder engagement and oversees the policy vision and action plans.
• Current planning practices across the three regions are dominated by a sectoral 'silo' approach, where national development plans are often just collections of sectorally agreed objectives, which hinders the creation of co-benefits and fragments implementation.
• Effective 'glocal' planning is required to harmonize global, regional, national, and local policies, ensuring that vertical relationships exist between national councils and subnational bodies such as provinces, districts, and cities.
• There is a critical need for 'sector-neutral' development themes—such as poverty reduction, gender, and environmental sustainability—and the use of policy screening tools to prioritize investments that yield synergies across multiple sectors.
• Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting (MER) systems are currently skewed toward expenditure reporting rather than development outcomes; future systems must be based on SMART targets and provide evidence for policy-making.
• Significant capacity gaps exist at the subnational and local levels, specifically regarding the skills needed to manage, analyze, and use information for evidence-based planning.

APA

Bizikova, L., Huppé, G. A., Tulsie, B., Paas, L., King, P., Olsen, S. H., Sano, D., Cornforth, J., Ullah, F., Urama, K., Ozor, N., Acheampong, E., & Swanson, D. (2014). Summary of Capacity-building Needs to Advance Sustainable Development Planning and Implementation. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/sdplannet_summary.pdf

Chicago

Bizikova, Livia, Gabriel A. Huppé, Bishnu Tulsie, Leslie Paas, Peter King, Simon Hoiberg Olsen, Daisuke Sano, et al. Summary of Capacity-building Needs to Advance Sustainable Development Planning and Implementation. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2014. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/sdplannet_summary.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{bizikova2014summary, author = {Bizikova, Livia and Huppé, Gabriel A. and Tulsie, Bishnu and Paas, Leslie and King, Peter and Olsen, Simon Hoiberg and Sano, Daisuke and Cornforth, Jack and Ullah, Farooq and Urama, Kevin and Ozor, Nicholas and Acheampong, Ernest and Swanson, Darren}, title = {{Summary of Capacity-building Needs to Advance Sustainable Development Planning and Implementation}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2014}, month = jun, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/sdplannet_summary.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }