As MSPs prepare to vote on Scotland’s Budget on Wednesday 25th February, our friends from the SDG Network Scotland reflect on how Scotland is making progress and where important connections are still being missed in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Scotland’s Budget arrives, as ever, in a tight fiscal context. This year’s documents are framed around cost-of-living pressures, child poverty, and reforming public services to make them more sustainable. There is a lot here that will feel familiar, and in many areas, welcome.
What is striking, though, is not what the Budget says about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but what it does not say. The SDGs are not mentioned explicitly. That in itself is not the issue. The more interesting question is whether the Budget acts like the SDGs matter.
Using the SDGs as a lens to read the Budget tells us quite a lot about where Scotland is making progress and where important connections are still being missed.
Social goals front and centre
On the social SDGs, the alignment is clear and strong. Poverty reduction, particularly child poverty, dominates the Budget narrative. Investment in the Scottish Child Payment, a dramatic increase in Discretionary Housing Payments, and wider measures around childcare, employability and transport map closely to SDG 1 on No Poverty and SDG 10 on Reduced Inequalities.
Health and wellbeing also sit at the heart of the Budget. Record funding for health and social care, alongside commitments to reduce waiting times, strengthen community provision and address delayed discharge, aligns strongly with SDG 3. The emphasis on social care as essential infrastructure for a functioning health system reflects the SDG focus on prevention and wellbeing, even if the language used is primarily about system flow and performance.
Education and early years investment similarly align well with SDG 4. Support for children and young people is visible across multiple portfolios. Yet here, as elsewhere, the framing is overwhelmingly about service delivery and cost-of-living mitigation, rather than rights, participation or long-term capability building.
There is also a more practical gap. Scotland has set ambitious expectations around learning for sustainability, curriculum reform and wider education transformation, and a number of reviews in this space are ongoing or recently completed. However, it is less clear where the dedicated resource sits to implement these ambitions at scale. Investment appears focused on maintaining core services rather than driving systemic change. From an SDG perspective, this matters. SDG 4 is not only about access to education, but about quality, relevance and preparing learners for sustainable futures. Without visible investment in implementation and capability, there is a risk that reform remains aspirational rather than transformational.
Housing, place and sustainable communities
Housing and homelessness stand out as one of the most SDG-relevant areas of the Budget. Increased investment in affordable housing, a clear focus on tackling the housing emergency, and commitments to strengthen housing standards speak directly to SDG 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Rural and island issues also feature across the Budget through place-based investment in housing, health and social care, energy efficiency, transport and connectivity. These measures matter for sustainable development, but they are scattered across portfolios rather than pulled together into a coherent territorial or place-based story.
Environment present, but not integrated
Environmental goals are there, but they are not driving the Budget. Nature restoration receives support demonstrating some commitment to SDG14. Equally, investment in energy efficiency and decarbonisation aligns with SDGs 12 and 13, and the links between climate action, housing quality and fuel poverty are clear.
What is less visible is how environmental objectives are being integrated with social and economic priorities. The SDGs are explicitly designed to force these conversations and ensure that investment and solutions recognise the links between these areas for the benefit of all. In the Budget, those trade-offs and potential synergies remain largely implicit.
The missing piece: governance and accountability
Where the Budget is least convincing through an SDG lens is in relation to SDG 16 on strong, effective institutions. While there is clear confidence in service delivery and reform, there is much less visibility around how learning, feedback and accountability are built into budget decision-making.
The Budget focuses heavily on inputs, outputs and system performance, but says relatively little about how government learns from what is not working, responds to unintended consequences, or adjusts course when outcomes are not being achieved. Mechanisms that support learning over time – such as feedback loops, transparency and review – are largely implicit rather than visible.
From a sustainable development perspective, this matters. The SDGs are not just about doing more, but about building systems that can adapt, learn and sustain progress over time. Without clearer attention to how decisions are reviewed and improved, there is a risk that reform becomes focused on efficiency rather than resilience.
This is also where SDG 17 on partnerships becomes relevant. The Budget frequently references partnership working, particularly with local government, health and social care partnerships, and the third sector. However, partnership is framed largely in delivery terms rather than as a mechanism for co-development, shared learning, challenge and course correction. From an SDG perspective, partnerships are not only about implementation, but about creating spaces where experience, evidence and lived realities can inform future decisions. Making these feedback loops more visible would strengthen the connection between partnership and long-term sustainability.
So what does this tell us?
Read through an SDG lens, Scotland’s Budget shows real strength on social goals and a genuine commitment to addressing poverty, health and housing challenges. But it also exposes gaps in coherence, particularly between social, environmental and governance objectives.
The absence of explicit SDG framing means these connections are not made visible. That makes it harder to see how priorities are balanced, how trade-offs are managed, and how progress will be tracked over time.
The challenge, then, is not whether future budgets should namecheck the SDGs. It is whether Scotland is willing to use them as they were intended: as a conceptual framework and practical tool for coherence, accountability and long-term thinking.
None of this requires budgets to become more complex or technical. Small shifts in how budgets are presented could make a significant difference: clearer articulation of how evidence and experience have shaped priorities; greater visibility of how outcomes are being reviewed over time; and more explicit recognition of where partnership and participation have influenced decisions. These are all consistent with the intent of the SDGs and would help bridge the gap between ambition and delivery.
If the SDGs are truly about leaving no one behind, then budgets need to show not only what we are funding, but how we are learning, adapting and working together to sustain progress over time.