Policy coherence (SDG 17.14.1)

The methodology attempts to capture various aspects of policy coherence, including: between different levels of government (local to national and vice versa); across key government ministries, departments and agencies and across sectors and themes; between national and international policy and across national boundaries; with respect to the diversity of perspectives and concerns that policies need to take into account, and in terms of promoting a long-term vision and coherence beyond political mandates. This methodology attempts to capture these mechanisms, so that countries may assess and report on their progress toward the indicator and at the same time identify areas for improvement to further enhance their policy coherence for sustainable development. The current indicator framework is composed of 8 domains (listed below). More details can be found in the methodology.

1. Institutionalization of Political Commitment

2. Long-term considerations in decision-making

3. Inter-ministerial and cross-sectoral coordination

4. Participatory processes

5. Policy linkages

6. Alignment across government levels

7. Monitoring and reporting for policy coherence

8. Financing for policy coherence

Promoting policy coherence for sustainable development is important in several ways, including for achieving sustainable development in its three dimensions (economic, social and environmental) in a balanced and integrated manner; for ensuring coherence between policies at various levels of government; and for ensuring that policies in different sectors are mutually supportive and do not work against each other. It is also important in addressing the impacts of domestic policy internationally.

The idea of measuring policy coherence is directly linked to building the capacity of countries to improve their policy coherence. Through starting a dialogue on policy coherence it opens a window for improving policy coherence, the inclusion of environmental issues and multi-lateral environment agreement commitments in national policy processes and strengthening data user-producer dialogues. UNEP has conducted a pilot testing of the approach for 17.14.1. in Guyana, Burkina Faso, Kenya and Tanzania. In the future:

• This could be expanded to additional countries.

• There is a plan to expand this work to Bangladesh with funding from a project on policy coherence and using environmental data.