Policy note: lessons from environmental policy integration for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda

This paper draws lessons from experiences with environmental policy integration (EPI) and discusses to what extent they apply for an integrated approach for policy implementation around the SDGs. It examines how four key policy-making dimensions identified in the EPI literature are applicable (or not) to the challenge of implementing the SDGs, and what new challenges and opportunities have surfaced, based on the characteristics of the goals.

The authors draw on three decades of policy experiences captured in EPI academic and policy literatures, as well as on adjacent experiences with policy coherence and mainstreaming.

The authors suggest that:

• SDG implementation faces integration challenges along the same dimensions as environmental policy integration.
• Major differences lie in the ways that the normative framework and the political will for SDGs can be configured.
• Early observations on SDG implementation suggest that challenges might be less pronounced than with has been the case for other examples of EPI.

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