Agenda 2030: Measuring Progress in the Montenegro’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development through SDG Indicators

Abstract

The Government of Montenegro nationalized 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development by adopting the National Strategy for Sustainable Development (NSSD) in 2016, together with a corresponding Action Plan for its implementation. The NSSD is umbrella, horizon- tal and long-term development strategy of Montenegro that relates not only to environ- ment and economics, but also to human resources, valuable social capital that should ensure prosperous development, recommendations for establishing the framework of financing and governance for sustainable development. The NSSD represents strategic framework for the transposition of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and its indicators into national context. The NSSD Action plan, divided into 6 thematic areas with 30 strategic goals of sustainable development of Montenegro and their 102 measures and 601 sub-measures, represents very complex mechanism for monitoring and reporting about achieving the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Montenegro. Hence, measuring progress in the NSSD implementation is the focus of this research. Effective measuring of the progress in the NSSD implementation could be achieved under the following preconditions: developed coordination mechanism for reporting, methodology of designing indicators, IT support for data collection and reporting, and strengthening of inter-linkages between the EU agenda and UN 2030 Agenda.