The National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) was presented to the Council of Ministers and officially approved by the Inter-ministerial Committee for Economic Programming (CIPE) in 2017.

It was prepared by the Italian Ministry of Environment Land and Sea (MoE) in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and all line Ministries, including other national authorities (National Statistical Institute - ISTAT, National Institute for Environmental Research - ISPRA, etc.).

In accordance with the Delibera CIPE 108/2017 the MoE provides a yearly review to be presented to CIPE.

The NSDS timeframe is set at 2030 and the Strategy is periodically updated, every three years.

The NSDS is intended as the overarching strategic framework to guide the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Italy and represents the national reference framework for planning and programming policies and for environmental assessments (SEA, EIA). Policy coherence for sustainable development (PCSD) is one of the guiding principles and tools.

The NSDS is an update of the former Environmental Action Strategy for Sustainable Development (2002-2010) widened to define broad guidelines for economic, social and environmental policies, aiming at achieving the sustainable development goals of the 2030 Agenda.

The NSDS provides for concrete SDGs activities on the five dimensions of the 2030 Agenda: “People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership” as well as a set of “sustainability vectors” – crosscutting, transversal areas of action that are essential to guiding, managing and monitoring the integration of the SDGs into national policies, plans and projects. These vectors include: (i) Common knowledge (ii) Monitoring and evaluating policies, plans and projects; (iii) Institutions, participation and partnerships; (iv) Education, awareness and communication; (v) Modernising public administration and restructuring public expenditure. The NSDS covers both the domestic dimension and the principles and purposes of international cooperation, in line with the Italian Cooperation's three-year Programming Document.

Since its adoption, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers oversees the implementation process of the National Strategy.

The Presidency of the Council of Ministers relies on the support of the Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, respectively for the domestic and the international policy making, as well as of the Ministry of Economy and Finance for creating synergies with formal economic policies and for assessing, on a yearly basis, long-term impacts of the budget on national sustainable well-being.

The NSDS (in Italian)

In 2019, a scientific and technical body, called Cabina di Regia Benessere Italia, was established by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers - DPCM - 9th of July 2019) aiming at implementing a coordinating mechanism at the centre of government level. Among its tasks, the Cabina di Regia ensures technical and scientific support to the Prime Minister in the coordination of equitable and sustainable well-being (BES) for national policies and in the implementation of the National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS).

Furthermore, with the aim to follow a more coherent PCSD approach in domestic policies (Decree Law 111 of 14 October 2019), the Inter-ministerial Committee for Economic Programming (CIPE) has been renamed into the Inter-ministerial Committee for Economic Programming for Sustainable Development (CIPESS), as of 1st January 2021. The change in the title foster the mandate of this Committee to steer economic programming towards the National Sustainable Development Strategy objectives in the context of Agenda 2030.

The NSDS is updated every three years. According to Art. 3 of Law 221/2015 and to the CIPE Resolution 108/2017, the MoE holds the initiative to propose to the Government a revised text of the NSDS, building on an institutional consultation process, to be submitted to the Presidency of the Council of Ministry for political endorsement. The first revision, expected for December 2020, will be completed by spring 2021 (due to Covid-19 emergency).

The revision process for the 2020 will benefit from a project financed by the European Commission within the Structural Reform Programme 2017-2020, called “Policy coherence for sustainable development: mainstreaming the SDGs in Italian decision-making process”, submitted by the Ministry of the Environment, in October 2019. The project, carried out in cooperation with the OECD and the DG Reform of the European Commission, aims at identifying a possible roadmap leading to a legislative and structural reform to strengthen policy coherence in achieving the SDGs.