The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offers a unique opportunity to put the world on a path towards higher stages of development, by combining material progress and social well-being. As part of the international community of nations, the Latin American and Caribbean region shares aspirations and challenges with the rest of the world, but it also has its own priorities, needs and hurdles to surmount. The 2030 Agenda essentially provides a potential snapshot of the desired future for the world. The process by which the Sustainable Development Goals were defined represents a participatory forward-looking effort to build a shared vision of the future and, as such, is an important step forward. It is now up to each country to adapt this image to its own reality, and to the priorities and aspirations of its society.

The Sustainable Development Goals can serve as a valuable guide to enrich and renew policies, planning and public governance and put them permanently at the service of development. It is time for the region to move towards policies of State rather than merely of government, because fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals will require continued, consistent and sustained efforts from a variety of stakeholders, including the State and its institutions, the private sector and society at large, through longterm policies and planning. The road map provided by the 2030 Agenda could prove to become a key driver of the structural change needed to achieve inclusive and sustainable development with equality.

This note presents a draft programme to promote the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and make it achievable, through capacity-building, technical assistance and institutional development. The programme seeks to generate a permanent mechanism for study and discussion of the scope, objectives, targets and indicators of the 2030 Agenda. Because the Agenda refers to multidisciplinary efforts and requires a multisectoral approach, a key aim of the proposed programme is to identify and foster the application of strategic tools to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals in institutions, policies and development plans. It will also strengthen specific skills and support institutional governance and the capacities of public administrations in the region’s countries, through the use of new methodologies and conceptual frameworks, techniques of government and public management, together with analytical and methodological tools, that generate the opportunity to share good practices for the planning and design of public policies —based on interactive learning.