Data on total official support for sustainable development (TOSSD) take a recipient perspective, in contrast to official development assistance (ODA) data, which take a donor perspective. The TOSSD metric captures development resource flows that are not included in donors’ reports to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee, and are intended to link resource flows to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For 2020, 98 donors reported TOSSD data, an increase of six donors from 2019. Reported net disbursements totaled $291 billion, including $62 billion reported only to TOSSD. The top five sectors in TOSSD reporting, accounting for 65% of net disbursements, were energy, donor administrative costs, in-donor refugee costs, health, and government and civil society.

For those disbursements linked to one or more of the SDGs, 61% went to the Health, Poverty Eradication, Climate Change, support for Decent Work and Sustainable Economic Growth, Ending Hunger, and Partnerships SDGs. The gender equality SDG was allocated just 4.5% of total net disbursements. TOSSD data provided a foundation of activity level detail to enable further research on allocations to SDGs. The picture that TOSSD data provide could be more complete if additional donors submitted reports to TOSSD, and if all donors reported on links to SDGs.