Policy coherence for sustainable development

The document argues that current understandings of policy coherence for sustainable development are overly technocratic and ignore political drivers like vested interests and ideologies. To address this, the author introduces a framework centered on 'ideas, institutions, and interests' to analyze how these factors influence policy coherence across different stages and actors. The paper demonstrates the framework's utility by examining the coherence between the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030, suggesting the model can be applied to empirical data at both national and global levels.

• Existing conceptualizations of policy coherence for sustainable development are primarily technocratic, focusing on intra-governmental processes and institutional interactions while ignoring political drivers such as ideologies or vested interests.
• The author introduces a political analytical framework based on 'the three I’s'—ideas, institutions, and interests—to determine how these elements influence policy options and the level of ambition assigned to different goals and actors when pursuing or resisting policy coherence.
• The proposed framework is applicable for studying policy coherence between international agendas, such as the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030 (including the Sustainable Development Goals), and can be used with empirical data at national or global scales.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2022). Policy coherence for sustainable development. https://www.sei.org/publications/policy-coherence-for-sustainable-development/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Policy coherence for sustainable development. 2022. https://www.sei.org/publications/policy-coherence-for-sustainable-development/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Policy coherence for sustainable development |date=29 November 2022 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/policy-coherence-for-sustainable-development/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2022policy, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Policy coherence for sustainable development}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2022}, month = nov, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/policy-coherence-for-sustainable-development/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }