Measuring alignment and intentionality of sport policy on the sustainable development goals.

Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has become an area of increased focus across the Commonwealth, and it has been recognised that overarching policy and strategy are required to maximise the impact of sport to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although there is a substantial, and growing, body of work that evaluates and discusses SDP programs and their outcomes, only limited attention has been paid to the policy level, both in considering the collective impact of governments and other large non-government organisations or agencies in this space and how these actors quantify the contribution of sport to sustainable development. The Commonwealth Secretariat report ‘Enhancing the Contribution of Sport to the Sustainable Development Goals’ (Commonwealth, 2017) identified a framework for sport and development policy options, and called for improved measurement of progress via data, monitoring and accountability. This report identified four key approaches to collective implementation of SFD for contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals: government-led implementation, structured implementation partnerships, complementary implementation and, autonomous implementation. Further, it identified three levels of evidence that may be considered in assisting policy makers assess the contributions of sport to sustainable development: national and international level data, regional- and local-level data; evidence drawn from the monitoring and evaluation of discrete initiatives and evidence from academic research.