The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) constitute the foundation established by the international community in 2015 for advancing towards a new development model capable of eradicating extreme poverty, generating quality employment and tackle the climate crisis to leave no one behind. The Latin American and Caribbean countries actively embraced these principles and reorganized their economic, social and environmental targets to achieve progress towards the fulfilment of the SDGs, while incorporating the agenda and goals into their national planning systems, as reflected in the region’s numerous voluntary national reviews.

However, the progress made thus far towards the SDGs is highly uneven and severely at odds with the comprehensive nature of the 2030 Agenda and thus, jeopardizes its achievement. For this reason, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has reviewed holistically in this report the main economic, social and environmental trends -in both the global and regional contexts- that affect progress towards the 2030 Agenda through 72 SDG indicators. Further, three crucial topics for Latin American and Caribbean- namely unemployment, extreme poverty and greenhouse gas emissions- are analyzed by way of simulated scenarios through 2030. With this, ECLAC provides an assessment of the risks that countries in the region face with regards to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Since the first annual session of the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development in 2017, ECLAC has prepared a report on regional progress and challenges in relation to the 2030 Agenda, examining changes in the international context, how these changes affected the economic, social and environmental dynamics in the region and the path towards achieving the SDGs. This report, prepared for the fourth meeting of the Forum (March 2020), continues that effort.