Governments face mounting pressure to deliver societal value with limited public resources.

The Sustainable Public Finance Observatory (SPFO) is a joint initiative of the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, and the United Nations Environment Programme. It applies the Sustainable Budgeting Approach (SBA) to publicly available data on government spending and taxation, evaluating the alignment of fiscal policies with economic, social, and environmental wellbeing.

Rising debt, the escalating costs of climate inaction, and growing social pressures mean that every dollar of public spending must maximise impact across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Without clear visibility into how public funds are currently allocated – including how they contribute to climate and development trajectories – decision-makers lack the evidence to shift resources to higher-impact investments.

Project overview

The SPFO addresses this by providing transparent, comparable insights into the alignment of fiscal policies with drivers of societal value across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. This supports decision-makers to identify gaps and trade-offs in current funding allocations and to redirect spending toward activities that provide holistic societal impact.

The SPFO is designed to support Ministries of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development; multilateral institutions involved in fiscal policymaking, climate financing, and development planning; and researchers analysing the climate and development alignment of public finance.

The SPFO Data Explorer

The SPFO Data Explorer provides interactive visualisations of spending data for an expanding set of countries, accompanied by regular reports analysing the characteristics of global spending. Policies are categorised by SBA archetype and assessed across eight indicators covering greenhouse gas emissions, natural capital, air pollution, adaptation and resilience, income inequality, and rural livelihoods.

Supporting governments

The team supports governments, Ministries of Finance, and multilateral partners to leverage the SBA in practice – providing training, analysis, and tailored policy recommendations to achieve more impactful outcomes through public spending and taxation. The SBA can be applied for tracking and transparency or to support active decision-making, and has been used in national budgeting processes since 2020, including a collaboration with the UNDP in Gabon.