The Millennium Summit in September 2000, one of the largest gatherings of world leaders in history, adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which committed the nations to the global partnership to reduce extreme poverty through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  The MDGs established for the period 2000 to 2015 registered imbalanced progress. According to the United Nations (UN) 2015 Report on the MDGs, inequalities persist, and progress was not uniform across the world. In 2013, upon recognition that the time-frame for achieving the MDGs would expire, the United Nations introduced the post 2015 Development Agenda.  The discussions culminated at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 25, 2015 with the adoption of Transforming our world: Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.

Saint Lucia, along with many other global leaders, made a commitment to promote sustainable development by signing onto the Agenda 2030. The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, has replaced the MDGs, a more robust and enhanced set of goals that focuses on people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership.

The Agenda is made up of seventeen (17) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and one hundred and sixty-nine (169) corresponding targets. Countries must now take ownership of the SDGs and develop strategies.

The UN developed the Mainstreaming, Acceleration and Policy Support (MAPS) to guide countries in landing the SDGs into national development plans with technical expertise from the UN systems. Saint Lucia began engagement with the UNDP in 2016 with the aim of developing a SDGs roadmap for the country. This roadmap will be developed through MAPS mission stakeholder engagement. The MAPS has three stages: 1. pre-mission; 2. MAPS mission; and 3. post mission. With the assistance of the cabinet endorsed Sustainable Development Goals National Coordinating Committee (SDGNCC) Saint Lucia has completed the pre-mission made up of the Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA) and the MAPS scoping mission.

The RIA assisted in identifying Saint Lucia’s readiness to implement the SDGs by evaluating the country’s policy, plans and programmes against the targets of the SDGs. The findings of the RIA were presented at the MAPS scoping mission hosted in September 2018 by the SDGNCC Secretariat in collaboration with the Department of Economic Development and the Coalition of Civil Society Organization for Sustainable Development. The Scoping mission not only presented the findings of the RIA, but also engaged stakeholders in order to better understand the country’s needs to be addressed in the MAPS mission. The scoping mission resulted in the identification of the proposed priority areas for focus for the upcoming mission wherein:

The UNDP will assemble a UN Country Team (UNCT) which will provide support for the following planning processes:

Planning for the National Development Plan (NDP)

Development of Financing Solutions

Monitoring and Evaluation Framework: Data, Indicators and Statistics

Risk Analysis

Development of an Advocacy Plan and Communication Strategy

The MAPS process is one that is being strategically planned, to ensure that it ties in seamlessly with the development of the Medium-Term Development Strategy. It will also feed into the National Development Plan process as well and will require the involvement of the Parliament of Saint Lucia. The Department of Economic Development and the Department of Sustainable Development work closely going into the MAPS mission, given the importance of mainstreaming the SDGs into the country’s national development processes. With this partnership, the prioritization of the SDGs during the MAPS mission will ensure that the SDG Roadmap and the MTDS/NDP are SDG sensitive/conscious. The MAPS mission is taking place from May 6-13, 2019.