This report on progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals is submitted in response to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (General Assembly resolution 70/1).

As the first cycle of SDG implementation and review comes to a close and Member States gear up for the High-Level Political Forum in July and five major sustainable development focussed meetings in September, this ‘Special Edition’ of the Sustainable Development Goals Progress Report was written in cooperation with the United Nations system Task Team on the High-level Political Forum, co-chaired by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the United Nations Development Programme.

The report demonstrates that over the past four years, progress has been made in a number of Goals and targets and a wealth of action has been undertaken by Governments and other stakeholders to respond to the 2030 Agenda more broadly.

The report also demonstrates, however, that progress has been slow on many Goals, that the most vulnerable people and countries continue to suffer the most, and that the global response thus far has not been ambitious enough.

With the next decade of implementation in mind, this report identifies a series of cross-cutting areas where political leadership and urgent, scalable multi-stakeholder action are needed to dramatically accelerate progress. Doing so will allow us to shift the world onto a trajectory that is compatible with achievement of the SDGs by 2030.

Introduction

1. Four years ago, world leaders came together at the United Nations and adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

2. Governments responded to the common challenges they face and the changing world around them by uniting behind a truly forward-looking, yet urgent, plan to end poverty and create shared prosperity on a healthy and peaceful planet. It was a moment of great hope and promise, when the light of an inclusive multilateralism shone brightly, as it did throughout 2015 with the adoption of other significant and related global agreements - the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

3. In September, Heads of State and Government will gather once again, this time to take stock of how far we have come in realizing our sustainable development commitments. Through the SDG Summit, the Climate Action Summit and high-level meetings of the General Assembly on universal health coverage, financing for development, and the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action - or Samoa Pathway-, leaders from all sectors will also have an opportunity to signal the urgent steps they will take to increase the ambition and impact of implementation efforts.