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Building a Sustainable Development Architecture: The Mexican Initiative

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Theme

Governance Structures and Strategies

Function

Good Practice Examples

Sound governance structures have proven to be a critical foundation for recovery efforts and for accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Beyond the immediate COVID-19 response, setting the course for a resilient recovery and pushing forward the 2030 Agenda strongly relies on government-wide action, policy coherence and institutionalised multi-stakeholder cooperation. In Mexico, decisive steps had already been made in this direction prior to the pandemic outbreak. 

 

In 2017, with technical support from the 2030 Implementation Initiative, the office of the Mexican President led the coordination of a national 2030 Agenda strategy. The Mexican strategy outlines a systemic vision of governance for sustainable development and sets the path towards an effective coordination of all interests linked to sustainability. The National Council for Sustainable Development is in charge of its implementation. It is led by the President and hosted by the 2030 Agenda Office in the Secretariat of Economy, and brings together all dependencies of the federal executive government as well as representatives of local governments, civil society, businesses, the private sector and academia. Its aim is to coordinate and promote multi- stakeholder efforts to achieve the Agenda 2030 in Mexico. All 32 Mexican states and more than 300 municipalities have formally installed similar coordination mechanisms to reflect this national political commitment in their local governance (Voluntary National Review, 2021).

 

In the legislative branch, a special commission has been created in the Senate to monitor the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whereas a working group in the Chamber of Deputies is driving action towards a SDG-compliant budget. A legislative strategy to mainstream the 2030 Agenda into federal law-making was also developed. Methodological support for evidence-based policy making is provided by a technical committee chaired by the national statistics office and composed of several government secretariats and agencies. Additionally, collaboration between science, the public and private sectors is promoted by the Mexican Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), kick-started with German development cooperation support.

 

Mexican efforts to build a robust sustainable development architecture have paid off. Both the Planning Act – a keystone of Mexican development planning – and the current National Development Plan (2019-2024) now anchor the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. At a sub-national level, 14 states have aligned their development agendas with the global goals and nine have tracked their progress towards the SDGs with Voluntary Local Reviews.

 

Although significant progress has been made in laying the building blocks of a functional governance architecture in Mexico, the challenges for accelerating SDG action are even greater in the context of the pandemic. During the next few years, a new initiative supported by the 2030 Implementation Initiative will help further strengthen Mexico’s sustainable development architecture and align its social recovery measures and digitalisation with the 2030 Agenda.