The purpose of Sustainable Development Goals financing is to ensure the right mix of resources are available in the right places at the right time to solve specific real-world problems. These include challenges like deprivation of basic human needs, obesity-induced non-communicable disease, species loss from land and oceans, and greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. The SDGs will only be properly financed and achieved when there is clarity on each of the underlying problems to be solved, on the respective mechanisms needed to address them, and on the appropriate mix and volume of resources needed for implementation. In this paper, we stress the need to think beyond financing aggregates to a more granular description of specific types of resource gaps in specific countries. We “zoom out” on the big picture issues in order to encourage “zooming in” on the practical ones.

The second foundational agreement is embedded in paragraph 12 of the U.N.’s 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development. It makes a commitment for a new “social compact,” one that delivers social protection and essential public services for all. Within this pledge, the emphasis on nationally appropriate spending targets is crucial. Addis did not envisage a single point estimate of spending needs for all, but instead allowed for country differentiation. Hence each country has a unique fiscal path to developing its own SDG economy.

Ultimately, SDG economies require building public services and societal systems that do three things: ensure essential public services are available to every human being; build fast-growing cities and industries that succeed on environmental and social terms too; and retrofit currently “advanced” cities and industries that are still not delivering on a range of SDG outcomes, such as the global food system and its adverse effects on health and the environment. In moving towards this vision, all segments of society must contribute.