Assessing the Impact of Global Goals

Abstract

Setting the Stagefrank biermann, thomas hickmann and carole-anne se ´nitIn 2015, the United Nations General Assembly agreed on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to guide public policies and inspire societal actors to promote sustainable development worldwide. The core of this programme are 17 'Sustainable Development Goals' with 169 more specific targets. Two years of intense intergovernmental negotiations at the United Nations headquarters in New York preceded the adoption of this agenda, which formally entered into force on 1 January 2016 . The programmatic timespan is short: the goals and targets under the new agenda for sustainable development should be achieved by 2030. Some targets were to be reached even by 2020.The ambition expressed in these Sustainable Development Goals is unprecedented. The goals and the overarching 2030 Agenda aim at nothing less than 'Transforming Our World' (UNGA 2015). The world's governments are now committedwithin less than a decadeto ending poverty and hunger, providing universal access to basic services such as healthcare, education, water and sanitation, housing and social protection; reducing inequality within and among countries and to ending all discriminations (including gender); protecting our natural environment; and promoting peaceful and inclusive societies.These goals are not the first attempt at global governance by goal-setting. To start with, the Sustainable Development Goals were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals that were operational from 2001 to 2015. These earlier goals had helped galvanize some individual and collective action, and many actors, from governments to activists, felt that more 'global governance through goals', with a renewed set of broader and more ambitious targets, would further bolster sustainable development (Sachs 2012). In addition, the Sustainable Development Goals draw on a few other earlier experiences with global governance through goalsetting, such as the Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children or the first Development Decade that dates as far back as 1961 (Hickmann et al. 2020; Vijge et al. 2020). The Sustainable Development Goals are thus not entirely new as a mechanism 1

Scoping article: research frontiers on the governance of the Sustainable Development Goals

“…The SDG Impact Assessment (Biermann et al, 2022a, 2022b) was the first comprehensive study that focused on the political steering effects of the SDGs on the governance of sustainable development across actors, sectors, and levels. Despite the lack of substantial political impact of the SDGs, this study pointed to a number of governance areas where initial political changes occurred due to the SDGs.…”

“…A global assessment of the political impact of the SDGs (subsequently referred to as the ‘SDG Impact Assessment’) published in 2022 has pointed to serious governance gaps in the implementation of the SDGs (Biermann et al, 2022a, 2022b). The assessment brought together 61 scholars who evaluated more than 3,000 studies to determine whether and how the SDGs have steered the behavior of actors and institutions at all governance levels.…”

Sustainable development goals in public administrations: Enabling conditions in local governments

“…Despite the ultimate responsibility for achieving SDGs lying with the national governments, LGs are at the core of SDG implementation (Saner et al, 2017). As Biermann et al (2022) indicate, local, regional, and national authorities are expected to join the global effort and align their policies and programmes with the SDGs and their targets, and the global goals should be reflected in the individual initiatives of the municipalities.…”

Sustainable Development Goals in BRICS and G7 countries: Increasing accomplishments through policy synergies in four dimensions

“…The SDGs are established as a roadmap for a more sustainable future for every nation (Allen et al, 2016; Elder & Olsen, 2019). However, despite the SDGs receiving a lot of attention and widespread support (Biermann et al, 2022; Chasek et al, 2016), little is known about how well‐suited each goal contributes to achieving the others (Gupta & Nilsson, 2017). Many interactions between the three pillars of the SDGs (human development, environment, and economic growth) occur as a result of the pursuit of prioritizing specific goals or targets across countries (Sachs et al, 2019), although many policymakers and experts assert there is an underlying “trade‐off” among these pillars (Elder & Olsen, 2019; Hatfield‐Dodds et al, 2015).…”