A framework to harness effective partnerships for the sustainable development goals

Abstract

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) offer a broad, holistic framework of interdependent economic, social, and environmental objectives to enable integrated and collaborative approaches to their implementation. A key obstacle for operationalizing such an approach is knowing the right actors to engage on specific challenges. It is acknowledged that linkages across sectors, scales, and actors could provide an evidence base to assess and forge participation in multistakeholder partnerships for implementation. However, technical tools that could help to identify relevant actors and discussions of institutional arrangements to bring these actors on board are notably lacking in the extant literature. To support an evidence-based and systematic approach to coalition building that accounts for synergies and trade-offs across goals and targets, this paper proposes broad-based partnerships and a framework that lead actors can use to help harness collaborative SDG implementation: (1) define the partnership’s scope, (2) identify the main interlinkages, (3) assign responsibilities, (4) select the best available indicators, (5) assess the challenges, and (6) forge a broad-based partnership. After describing key decisions at each step, the article discusses applications of the proposed analytic partnership-building framework to problems that warrant the approach at global, regional, and national levels covering issues such as policy coordination across line ministries, global partnerships for SDG13 implementation in SIDS, energy compacts for SDG7 implementation, and integrated multilateral responses to crises.

Towards a Portfolio Approach: Partnerships for Sustainable Transformations

“…Connecting SDG interactions with specific types of partnerships in this way has powerful potential because it provides an evidence‐based framework and institutional arrangement to negotiate joint actions for integrated implementation (Le Blanc, 2015; Nilsson et al, 2016; Weitz et al, 2017). Furthermore, it offers a yardstick to assess participation and forge more effective and equitable partnerships (Horan, forthcoming).…”

“…By bringing together key actors from interconnected sectors (water, energy, health, etc.) and stakeholder groups (government, UN agencies, business, academic, NGOs), partnerships can help to exploit synergies and tackle trade‐offs and thereby enable more effective and equitable implementation (Horan, forthcoming). In other words, partnerships can help to ensure the voices of stakeholders are heard (Pattberg & Widerberg, 2016) and therefore forge a more coordinated multisectoral approach to transformation.…”

“…Such an approach is important to ensure greater coherence in sustainable development (Chan & Iacobuta, 2020). It also offers a lens through which to examine the political economy of SDG implementation (Horan, forthcoming).…”

“…To identify relevant actor constellations, one approach could use mappings of interlinkages between the SDGs and studies of the actor's alignment to specific goals and targets (Horan, forthcoming).…”

“…Comparing the two would offer information useful to assess the extent to which current constellations achieve an appropriate level of integration in partnerships. While the approach is data intensive, being predicated on having good knowledge of SDG interactions and actors’ activities, and actual integration is by no means guaranteed, it does offer a strategic framework to identify those actors who are contributing to synergies and to trade‐offs and to bring attention to important aspects of the political economy of implementation (Horan, 2021).…”