Sustainable Development Goals

This is the widely accepted definition of “sustainable development”, which refers to the notion of compatibility between development of economic activities and environmental protection.

On 25 September 2015, the Assembly General of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, that showed the guidelines for international activities for the following 15 years. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals included in the 2030 Agenda represent the global action plan of the United Nations to eradicate poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) refer to several dimensions of development which involve environmental, social, economic and institutional issues, outlining a global action plan. The way to forward at the international level is defined by the Cape Town Global Action Plan, the strategy to implement the actions necessary for the modernisation and strengthening of statistical systems at the national and global levels.

In order to identify a shared statistical information framework for monitoring and assessing on progress towards the Goals of the Agenda, The United Nations Statistical Commission has established the Inter Agency Expert Group on SDG Indicators(UN-IAEEG-SDGs), which has defined a set of about 250 indicators.

Istat, along with with National Statistical System (Sistan), makes available statistical measures to monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals for Italy. Istat-SDGs statistical measures take into account the indicators defined by UN-IAEEG-SDG, together with national context data.

Since December 2016, Istat made available the information platform for SDGs indicators, updated twice a year.

In 2025 Istat presented the eighth edition of the Report on SDGs.