1. Introduction: Why should DSAs be adapted to the SDGs? In 2015, all the world’s governments agreed on Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs). These have since become the basis for all national development plans and goals, especially in countries of the global South, covering the period 2015-2030. Both of the Bretton Woods Institutions have integrated the SDGs into their work programmes. The World Bank already has two SDGs(1 – end poverty, and 10 – reduce inequality) as its core goals for its own operations, and is in the process of adding a climate goal and strengthening its inequality goal(World Bank 2024); and the IMF has framed much of its recent work around adapting to and being compatible with the SDGs, notably on confronting the climate crisis, promoting gender equality and reducing inequality, because of the strong negative impact such factors have on its mandate of promoting growth and financial stability(IMF 2023). Yet until 2020 for low-income countries(LICs) and 2022 for“market access countries”(MACs), debt sustainability analysis by the BWIs remained stuck in a world which took virtually no account of Agenda 2030. While the SDGs implied a doubling or trebling of government spending in many countries(Sachs and Schmidt­Traub 2014), the BWIs did not go beyond calculating some extra spending needs in a few countries and developing a toolkit for doing similar work in other countries. They failed to finish the work by indicating at country level how such spending needs could be financed without compromising debt sustainability and by helping countries mobilise funding on the basis of such SDG scenarios. Faced with massive additional spending needs, especially as it became clear the world was failing to mobilise the financing for them, they reverted back to“incrementalism”(small increases in spending) in country fiscal frameworks, and limited DSAs to analysing the risks of default arising from such frameworks and/or changes in macroeconomic prospects/financing costs, rather than as identifying how to finance sustainable development. This was an entirely“unsustainable” position. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts, countries like Tuvalu or Chad have little sustainable future unless they make plans NOW to combat the climate crisis, with plans that are sustainably funded. Many countries are potentially vulnerable to the climate crisis undermining their growth prospects and economic stability. In the same way, IMF and World Bank research has shown many times how extreme poverty, income inequality and gender inequality are undermining growth in many countries(on inequality, see IMF 2014 and 2017; on poverty see World Bank 2018). These negative impacts are not limited to individual countries: to the degree that life becomes less tenable and extreme poverty and inequality more widespread in many countries of the global South, there will also be higher levels of cross-country migration and insecurity across the world. The failure to ensure that SDG spending was adequately funded and therefore increasing – or that debt service was being kept at reasonable levels where countries were trying to spend more on the SDGs – meant that by 2023 Global South countries were spending much more on debt service than on key SDG sectors. According to the Debt Service Watch 1 database, debt service in 2023 is almost exactly equal to total SDG core social spending (on education, health and social protection) across 139 countries borrowing from the World Bank. In Africa and LICs, it exceeds social spending by almost 50 per cent. Looking at individual sectors, debt service is on average 2.5 times education spending, 3.7 times spending on health and 11 times social protection expenditure. The relationship with climate spending is equally startling(partly because delivery of climate finance via government budgets has been very low): on average across 42 countries for which data are available, debt service is 12 times climate adaptation spending in 2023, rising to 13 times in 2024. 1 Debt Service Watch is a database compiled by Development Finance International and launched in late 2023, which tracks debt service and spending on the core social and environmental SDGs, across all countries which borrow from the World Bank. It differs from other debt service data in that it covers both external and domestic debt service and is compiled in real time as soon as budget documents and debt management reports are released by developing countries, so that current data are for 2023. Development Finance International (2023a) presents its overall debt and social sector findings, and the summary database; and Development Finance International(2023b) presents its findings on debt service and climate adaptation spending. Series: Debt Sustainability Assessments& Their Role in the International Financial Architecture 1