Policy coherence for Sustainable Development in the SDG Framework: shaping targets and monitoring progress

This note, published by the OECD in 2015, considers how a target could be developed for policy coherence, including: the rationale for having a Sustinable Development Goal (SDG) target for policy coherence; the definition of policy coherence for sustainable development (PCSD); proposals for a SMART target for policy coherence; and types of indicator which could be used to monitor the target.As part of the OECD’s contribution to adapt policy coherence approaches to the Post-2015 Development Agenda, this note sets out some options for a more specific target 17.14 that meets the SMART criteria, and ways in which it could be measured, based on existing OECD work on policy coherence for sustainable development. The UN has not yet decided whether to adopt specific indicators for this area so there is now a critical window of opportunity. This is food for thought, intended to stimulate discussion among national focal points about what type of measures could be used for PCSD, which seek to update and go beyond existing PCD approaches. The measures set out in this paper could potentially be used as global SDG indicators, or alternatively, a complementary national indicator used for self-assessment by countries or benchmarking of OECD members.