In 2021, SDSN Europe established a Senior Working Group (SWG), consisting of top-level academics and stakeholders, to successfully mobilize expertise to implement the aforementioned challenging context successfully. Its first report, entitled “Transformations for the Joint Implementation of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the European Green Deal: A Green and Digital, Job-Based and Inclusive Recovery from COVID-19 Pandemic," was published in February 2021 to support policymakers with actionable strategies that can guide EU-wide and national economic recovery in line with Europe's overarching sustainability agenda.This second Report of the Working Group focuses on how to finance the joint implementation of Agenda 2030 and the European Green Deal. 

It starts in Section 1 by providing an overview of the wide-ranging EU policies published in 2020-21 in support of the implementation of the European Green Deal. Then, in Section 2, we map these Policies to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 6 Transformations of Agenda 2030 to help decision-makers understand how the different policies affect the transformations that countries need to undertake to achieve sustainability. Section 3 sheds light on some critical financial implications of the Sustainability Transition. Through a combination of case studies and best practices, we identify in Sections 3.1 and 3.3. a gradually changing paradigm towards greening the financial system. Section 3.2 focuses on the importance of Natural Capital for the transition to sustainability. Although numerous studies have demonstrated the emergency from biodiversity loss, less evidence has been provided on the changes we need at a political, financial and economic level to slow down and reverse this path. Section 4 lays out a framework for the post-pandemic world: mainstreaming funds to allow an SDG-based economic recovery and learning lessons from differences in pandemic resilience of world regions.

In summary, the very wide-ranging policy initiatives of 2020-2021 are tangible examples of the willingness of EU leaders to adopt SDGs as Europe's economic development framework. The substantial alignment of the European Green Deal with SDGs is a clear finding of our report’s analysis. However, even this ambitious framework may fall short of the necessary action to tackle major sustainability challenges, as indicated by independent assessments outlined in Section 5. Moreover, since the financing needs are huge, sustainable finance aspects will be the main topic of further work of this Senior Working Group in the coming years.