United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability A New Generation of Development Plans The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development encourages national target-setting and adaptation of the SDGs into national process, policies, and strategies. Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda there has been an increase in the number of national development plans (NDPs) adopted, accelerating a trend over the past two decades. The number of countries with an NDP has more than doubled between 2006 and 2018, from 62 to 134 (Chimhowu et al. 2019). NDPs have increasingly become an essential part of countries’ attempts to deal with the complexity of socio-economic and environmental processes at the national and global levels, and more recently, to respond to various international agreements (e.g., the Paris Agreement) and global agendas. An NDP stipulates the strategic direction, development priorities, and implementation strategies for a country, and is often produced through a national consensus process. It provides the institutional framework and foundation for other policy documents, such as budget plans, investment plans, and implementation processes, and for monitoring. Integration of the SDGs at the national level has rarely gone beyond mapping and reporting (Grainger-Brown and Malekpour 2019), and it remains unclear whether these plans can fully refect the transformative potential of the SDGs. Yet they are a signifcant step in integrating universally accepted global goals into national development planning. Accelerating 2030 Agenda Integration: Aligning National Development Plans with the Sustainable Development Goals Tarek Katramiz and Mahesti Okitasari No. 25, 2021 ias.unu.edu Highlights Achieving the SDGs and the transformation required by the 2030 Agenda hinges on effective national policies. National development plans play a critical role as they are at the centre of the policymaking process. To accelerate localisation of the SDGs national planning must be aligned with the SDGs through improving the policymaking process, removing systemic barriers, and engaging diverse stakeholders to innovate and sustain change. Recommendations: • Harness the SDGs as an opportunity to promote national goal-setting processes and infuence domestic policymaking. • Use the SDGs as a platform to mainstream sustainable development principles in national policymaking. • Strengthen national development planning by promoting approaches relevant to the SDGs. • Position human, social, environmental, economic, and institutional objectives at the same level. • Ensure inclusive participation and effective stakeholder engagement in implementing the 2030 Agenda and national development plans.