2030 Agenda – Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, UN Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to guide the promotion of sustainable development in 2016–2030. They aim to eradicate extreme poverty from the world and ensure wellbeing in an environmentally sustainable manner.

The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) apply to all countries of the world. National governments have the primary responsibility for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, but the delivery of the SDGs requires wide participation from local governments, the private sector, civil society and citizens.

The 2030 Agenda consists of 17 SDGs, which are meant to be achieved by 2030. The year 2023 marked the halfway point of the SDG timescale. The implementation of the goals is alarmingly behind schedule due to several simultaneous crises and the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finland is committed to achieving the goals both domestically and in its international cooperation. Our development cooperation and other international operations support this commitment.

What matters are pursued?

The 2030 Agenda aims at sustainable development in the areas of economy, people’s wellbeing and the environment. The 2030 Agenda consists of a plan for the means of implementation and a follow-up and review mechanism.

It includes 17 goals and 169 targets in all. Progress is monitored by means of over 200 indicators, in addition to which countries have their own national indicators. The countries are committed to promoting all 17 SDGs. The pledge to ‘leave no one behind’ (LNOB) is a central element of the 2030 Agenda.

See a full list of the targets and their indicators(Link to another website.).

The progress towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda is monitored globally. The annual UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF)(Link to another website.) plays an important role in monitoring progress on implementing the SDGs.

• Brochure: Sustainable development and well-being for 2030 (PDF, 869 KB) 
• Brochure: UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 Agenda (PDF, 740 KB)
• Mediabank - Downloadable 2030 Agenda logos(Link to another website.)

What progress has been made towards achieving the goals?

Halfway to the deadline for the 2030 Agenda, the SDG Progress Report; Special Edition(Link to another website.) shows that only 15 per cent of the goals are on track to be achieved by 2030. Progress on the rest of the goals is slow or has actually regressed.

Progress was made on many SDGs in 2015−2019. Positive results were achieved in eradicating extreme poverty, reducing maternal and child mortality and making clean water and electricity accessible to more people.

However, most of this progress came to a halt as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, and other crises. The crises have weakened the outlook for low-income and low middle-income countries in particular. Many of the indicators of development in these countries are showing negative trends.

Nevertheless, the assessment shows that the SDGs are still achievable with determined effort. In the 2023 SDG Summit, UN Member States committed themselves to accelerating sustainable development. The Pact for the Future adopted at the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024 also aims at more effective implementation of sustainable development through concrete action and commitments.

How to ensure financing for SDGs?

An agreement on financing for and on other means of implementing the 2030 Agenda were adopted at an international conference in Addis Abeba,(Link to another website.) Ethiopia, in 2015. The Financing for Development (FfD) Conferences are a series of major global meetings organised once in a decade. The next FfD conference will convene in Seville, Spain, in 2025.  

The annual gap in development funding necessary for the achievement of the SDGs is estimated to be around EUR 4,000 billion. However, this sum is only a fraction of the world’s investment assets.

Only a small part of the funding can be covered by public development finance. It is important that each country assumes responsibility for its own development. Developing countries’ own domestic resource mobilisation and national resources should be strengthened.

Key to this work is a commitment to develop taxation and fight corruption and illicit financial flows, among other measures. It is also important to ensure that policies are coherent and political decisions in various sectors consistently advance sustainable development. Science, technology, digitalisation and innovation can be harnessed to support practical solutions. Finland focuses on private financing and private sector solutions because of their growing role in promoting sustainable development.

Finland supports the implementation of the goals also in developing countries

Finland will consistently support sustainable development both domestically and internationally. Finland’s development policy is based on the SDGs.

Our development policy priorities promote the achievement of the SDGs. Finland promotes sustainable development especially in its areas of expertise, which include education and enhancing the position and rights of girls and women. In Finland’s view, the promotion of equality, inclusive education, technology, digitalisation and innovation plays an important role in the delivery of the SDGs.

General foreign and security policy and trade policy are also used to promote sustainable development. As a Member State of the European Union, Finland promotes, among other issues, the improvement of labour legislation everywhere in the world and, in international trade negotiations, takes into account the market access of products that are important for developing countries.

How does Finland implement the 2030 Agenda?

Finland is one of the pioneers in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. In international comparisons(Link to another website.), Finland has maintained its first place for four years in a row. Finland’s strengths include education and competence, a stable society, strong institutions and a model for implementing the SDGs that engages a wide range of actors in society.

Despite its success in international comparisons, Finland still needs to improve measures to combat inequality and climate change and make consumption and production patterns more sustainable. Work also remains to be done to improve gender equality.

In Finland, the Finnish National Commission on Sustainable Development plays a central role in the national implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The Commission is chaired by the Prime Minister. Operating continuously for over 30 years, it is the longest operating commission of its kind in the world. The Commission’s members are key actors in Finnish society, and this participatory approach has attracted a great deal of positive attention around the world.

A report on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is submitted to Parliament every four years (2017, 2020, 2024). The report(Link to another website.) to Parliament discusses the Government’s actions in respect of each of the 17 SDGs both in Finland and globally. It also describes the measures to monitor and assess the delivery of the goals.

The Government also reports on the progress to the UN. Finland will present its third national review on the progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda in July 2025. The previous national review(Link to another website.) was presented in 2020.

How were the sustainable development goals established?

In the late 1980s, the international community increasingly took the view that sustainable development has a social, economic and cultural dimension as well as an environmental one.

At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992, three international agreements central to sustainable development were signed: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change and the Convention to Combat Desertification.

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was added to the Convention on Climate Change. Countries that signed the agreement committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent below 1990 levels. However, the Kyoto Protocol covered only wealthy industrialised countries, and it was criticised for its lack of ambition.

At the turn of the millennium, world leaders once again came together to agree on future development. They adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which set out eight specific development targets that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)(Link to another website.). The target year of achieving the MDGs was 2015, by which time a great deal of progress had been made: for example, poverty in the world had halved compared to 1990, and over two billion people had gained access to clean drinking water.

However, development was not distributed evenly. Another challenge was that the MDGs mainly focused on developing countries and did not address unsustainable development taking place in the developed countries. Already before the target year for the MDGs, it was clear that more efforts should be devoted to promoting sustainable development and that other parties in addition to national governments should be engaged.

In 2012, another summit was organised in Rio de Janeiro, known as Rio+20, where UN Member States decided on steps for developing a set of development goals building on the MDGs. The goal was to develop a programme that would take the needs of developing countries better into account. The drafting of the goals involved, among other things, wide consultations with citizens, experts and governments. In the Sustainable Development Summit held in New York in autumn 2015, UN Member States agreed on a new sustainable development action programme called the 2030 Agenda.