Publication

Rapid Integrated Assessment: Example of government funding programmes for regional development and environmental protection of Ukraine

Screen Shot 2022-02-16 at 2.03.39 cover Ukraine

UNDP has proposed a number of tools to increase the countries capacity to achieve Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 (SDG-2030). One of them is the Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA), which makes it possible to assess the extent of inclusion of Sustainable Development Goals intended to be achieved by 2030 (SDG-2030) in the country's strategic planning. This tool helps to assess gaps in the integration of targets and indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals in strategic documents, which can serve as a basis for the inclusion of the SDGs in national and regional planning. However, it has become clear that taking into account the targets of SDG-2030 in the programme documents is only a necessary, but not sufficient step to achieve the SDGs. Instead, it is important to provide funding for the targets defined in the relevant strategic and policy documents. That is why UNDP is now modifying its approach to Rapid Integrated Assessment by creating the RIA+ tool, which is designed to assess whether existing funding meets the targets for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

This report is based on the analysis of 61 strategic and programme documents related to the integrated strategic development of the state, as well as issues of regional development, energy, water quality and environmental improvement. The documents include both the National Economic Development Strategy until 2030, the State Strategy of Regional Development until 2027, government programmes, and a number of sectoral strategies and plans. The expert assessment has been carried out on the basis of documents that have been adopted since 2016.

The analysis of budget programmes, the main manager of which is the MinRegion, focused on assessing the inclusion of SDG-2030 targets and indicators, for which the Ministry is responsible. We speak about both the Ministry's own programmes and national programmes on provision of subventions to local budgets. Some targets are examined here, in particular the ones related to SDG 6 ‘Clean water and sanitation’ and SDG 11 ‘Sustainable cities and communities’.

The analysis was also made for the budget programmes of the MinEnergo and MinEcology. This analysis was complicated by the fact that over the past few years there have been constant structural changes in these ministries due to their unification and subsequent separation.

The report has been prepared by UNDP in the framework of implementation of the “Promoting strategic planning and financing for sustainable development at the national and regional levels in Ukraine” Joint Programme.

To reinforce Ukraine’s SDG financing architecture, UNDP as the lead agency, together with WHO, UNICEF and the non-resident agency UNECE, is implementing a comprehensive Joint Programme to promote strategic planning and financing for sustainable development in Ukraine.