Abstract
This roundtable discussion raises and responds to the question: What can be learned from academic and local government partnerships to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? We draw on several years of cooperation between the Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles (CA, USA) and academic institutions on how to best advance and integrate the United Nations’ SDGs into policy. Stakeholders from this project give voice to varying perspectives across roles—as city officials, academic partners, graduate and undergraduate students—in the Los Angeles case of SDG implementation. The article outlines a “Task Force” model, under the joint facilitation of faculty advisors and guidance of city partners, that promotes students’ experiential learning, and meaningfully bridges theory and practice in bringing global frameworks to local practice. We highlight what we gain by disaggregating the local and taking space and place seriously in sustainability policy, while underscoring the importance of long-term trust and relationship building in the success of local sustainability efforts.
Highlights
Gaea MoralesThe element of “partnerships” and the importance of inter-institutional, cross-sector approaches are at the heart of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and its message to “leave no one behind”
Each stakeholder in the roundtable is responding to the question: What can be learned from academic and local government partnerships to advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? In doing so, we provide experiential evidence on the value of local government and academic partnerships, and a working model that we hope will inspire other cities and institutions to collaborate
(b) We cherish the relationships we have built with our student colleagues, faculty supervisors, and government officials. These relationships are founded on the belief that all of us are valuable to a conversation around SDG localization. We find that this level of collaboration is non-existent in most academic spaces
Summary
The element of “partnerships” and the importance of inter-institutional, cross-sector approaches are at the heart of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and its message to “leave no one behind”. In the spirit of the question, we bring together perspectives from local government, academic institutions, and students in the Los Angeles (L.A.) case [2] This roundtable approach serves to magnify the innovative practice of public and academic sectors’ (who) collaboration (what) in efforts to advance sustainable development (how). Academic advisors and students have worked over several years to support L.A. city efforts to adopt, translate, and mobilize around the sustainable development agenda in order to both inform local governance and better serve communities Common among these projects is a “Task Force” structure, or student consultant groups consisting of undergraduate and graduate students, working under the guidance or facilitation of an academic advisor and in close communication with city partners (from MOIA and/or other departments and offices). What we hope to demonstrate through this roundtable, is that when we work together, we are able to generate locally owned, locally driven change that serves individual experience and growth, and pedagogical and administrative goals in support of the sustainable development agenda
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