Discussion on SDG and NDC Implementation: Country Trends and Examples from the NDC Partnership is a Technical Brief developed by the NDC Partnership in 2022 to inform the 3rd Global Conference on Strengthening Synergies between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, held in Tokyo in July 2022. It presents trends and examples of how countries are linking climate commitments under NDCs with Sustainable Development Goals implementation.
Key insights:
The brief shows that NDC implementation and SDG implementation are strongly connected, even when countries do not always explicitly mention the SDGs in their climate support requests.
Only 2% of requests submitted through the NDC Partnership explicitly mention “SDGs,” but 47% of countries submitting requests had at least one request that mentions SDGs.
Requests that explicitly mention SDGs receive higher levels of partner support: 83% compared with an average of 65% for all country requests.
The brief highlights that linking NDCs and SDGs can help countries attract finance and investment, improve national strategies and plans, and strengthen monitoring, reporting, and verification systems.
Country examples show different ways of linking the two agendas. Colombia integrated SDG-related sectors such as food security, biodiversity, health, and infrastructure into its updated NDC.
Uganda is using a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, including gender integration, climate budget tracking, greenhouse gas inventories, and systems to monitor mitigation, adaptation, and climate finance.
Burkina Faso aligned its NDC revision with 16 of the 17 SDGs and developed sectoral implementation plans covering agriculture, environment, energy, transport, water, health, gender, infrastructure, and habitat.
The brief stresses that sectoral integration is one of the most common ways countries connect climate and development priorities.
It also notes that policy cycle mismatches can make integration difficult, as seen in Palestine’s efforts to link its NAP and NDC with national development planning.
Finance remains a major challenge, especially after the COVID-19 crisis increased debt burdens and pressure on national budgets.
Main message: Stronger alignment between NDCs and SDGs can help countries raise climate ambition, improve development outcomes, attract finance, and make implementation more coherent across sectors, budgets, and national planning systems.
