The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on a network of 276 international organizations

Can goals change the world? In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) unanimously adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to "transform our world" by 2030. With these highly ambitious goals, world leaders pledged to "end hunger", "achieve gender equality", "protect life on land", and much more. Importantly, the SDGs emphasise the need for more collaboration, the breakdown of 'silos' in global governance, and to achieve the SDGs in a balanced and integrated manner. This call for both institutional and policy integration in global governance is long-standing, but remains highly challenging. The SDGs - as the most central and ambitious global agenda so far - have given a renewed impetus to this call. Yet, empirically, we know very little about the effects of global goals. Can non-binding, highly ambitious goals really steer global governance? In this thesis, I investigate the steering effects of the SDGs on international organisations. Specifically, I assess whether - since the advent of the SDGs - institutional integration among and policy integration within international organisations has increased. My methods are both quantitative and qualitative. I rely primarily on a large dataset of scraped websites of 276 international organisations, and assess the contents of and hyperlinks between websites. To complement this data, I also conduct a discourse analysis and analysis on Twitter data. My findings can be summarised in four key points. First, while many international organisations use the SDGs on their websites, the SDGs are not yet a fully global framework. Many international organisations use the SDGs on their websites, and this increases over time. However, the SDGs are mainly used by the larger organisations and by UN entities, while many of the smaller and more regional organisations do not or barely use the SDGs. Second, policy integration overall is increasing, but the integration of environmental topics with socio-economic topics is lagging behind. As mentioned, the call for more policy integration is long-standing, and indeed an increase in policy integration is observed in my study. However, mainly socio-economic topics (ending poverty, decent work, innovation and infrastructure) are integrated with one another, while the integration of environmental with socio-economic topics occurs much less frequent. Third, while policy integration is overall increasing, the SDGs appear not to be an influencing factor. The international organisations that use the SDGs more, do not subsequently show an increase in policy integration. It is rather the other way around: those international organisations that already showed higher levels of policy integration, also use the SDGs more. Thus, the SDGs are used to frame efforts towards policy integration, but do not spur it. Fourth, the SDGs facilitate institutional integration within policy domains. This also means, conversely, that institutional integration between policy domains has decreased. Thus, contrary to political expectations of the SDGS to "break down silos", silos around the 17 issue areas of the SDGs and around the economic, social and environmental dimension of sustainability have strengthened.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015. They are a worldwide call to end poverty, protect the planet, and promote peace and prosperity for everyone by 2030. The 17 SDGs are interconnected and seek to strengthen the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Malaysia is one of the countries committed to these global goals. In every situation, achieving the SDGs requires collaboration and resources from all parts of society, and youths are the part of the population that is most important in implementing the SDGs. To get young people involved in the planning and building of the country's sustainable development, it is important for different groups to work together. This article examines how partnerships can effectively help an organisation reach its goals and what the most important principles are when forming a partnership. In this paper, the Malaysian Youth SDG Summit will be used as a case study. The summit started with the support of 30 youth-based organisations and was backed up by the Malaysian Civil Society Organisation—SDG Alliance and the All-Party Parliamentary Group Malaysia—SDG. The Malaysian Youth SDG Summit, which began as a one-day event, has evolved into a year-long effort to develop the capacity of young people to become SDG competent through the Youth SDG Agent initiative. The study provides information on how to leverage partnerships to expose youth to sustainable developments, drawing on the case from the youth SDG Summit and youth SDG agents. The strength of the partnership has made a big difference in the brand's credibility, its exposure in the media, its network, its support for hardware, and its human resources.

The operation period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ended in 2015, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be in operation in 2016-2030. The sustainable development agenda contained 17 goals and covered a broad range of quantitative and qualitative objectives across social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. These include (i) ending poverty and hunger, (ii) sustainable consumption and production, (iii) improving health and education, (iv) making cities more sustainable, (v) combating climate change, and (vi) protecting oceans and forests. Sustainable food production, marketing, and other post-harvest management practices are important to achieving majority of the SDGs. This paper examines the required changing roles of private and public organisations, as well as international organisations, in 2016-2030 to enhance resilience of agricultural food value chains in Thailand. The Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) of Thailand is a growth and development model characterised by its universality and inclusiveness; people-centred approach; moderation, moral values, and reasonableness; and knowledge and integrity. The SEP encourages a holistic farm management system to promote sustainability, food security, water conservation and biodiversity, development of human resources, risk management, investment, and expansion of businesses, thereby creating self-sufficiency at the household, community, organisational, and national levels. These objectives of the SEP are somewhat consistent with Goals 1, 2, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 15 of the SDGs. The required roles of organisations to enable Thailand to achieve the SDGs towards enhancing the resilience of agricultural food value chains are presented, and the policy implications are highlighted.

The success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on solving the ‘nexus’ challenge: how can positive interactions between SDGs be optimised, and negative interactions minimised, in order to create co-benefits and reduce trade-offs? Due to their varying impacts on the SDGs, the economic activities undertaken by organisations present a key lever for operationalising this SDG-nexus. Yet the interactions between individual economic activities and the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development have not been systematically assessed, thus creating a vital operational bottleneck to achieving the SDGs. This paper conducts a systematic review of 876 articles published between 2005 and 2019 to study the nexus between individual economic activities, sustainable development in general, and the SDGs in specific. It finds that studies on agricultural, industrial, and manufacturing activities predominantly report negative impacts on environmental development, while literature on services activities highlight economic and social contributions. Overall, most economic activities are expected to positively impact industrialization, infrastructure, and innovation [SDG 9] and economic productivity [SDG 8], while many help meet basic needs [SDGs 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 11]. However, negative impacts are widespread, afflicting ecosystems [SDGs 14 and 15], climate change [SDG 13] and human health [SDG 3]. We synthesise positive and negative interactions between individual economic activities and SDG targets and discuss implications for: integrated (nexus) governance approaches to the SDGs; the role of the private sector in promoting sustainable development; and for improving statistical classifications to monitor economic activities’ SDG impacts.

In global sustainability governance, many actors have emphasised the need for policy integration across the economic, social, and environmental dimensions. In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to advance such integration. But have international organisations responded to this call, and can we observe any integrative effect of the SDGs? We draw on International Relations theories that incorporate change in their analysis and develop an analytical framework to assess change through the lenses of ideas, norms, and institutions. We use this framework to assess sustainability-oriented change in the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The ILO is traditionally an organisation with a primarily socio-economic mandate and hence an ideal case to study whether the SDGs had any impact after 2015 in strengthening the environmental dimension of sustainability in the ILO’s institutional settings and policy development. We focus on the 2010–2019 period and conduct a systematic qualitative content analysis of primary documentary sources, complemented with expert interviews and data on operational developments. The paper concludes that there is a significant yet instrumental greening trend in the ILO’s approach to sustainable development, but also a bidirectional influence between the ILO and the SDGs.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Requires Transdisciplinary Innovation at the Local Scale

The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit held on 25th September 2015, adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and about 169 targets that aim at ending poverty, fghting inequality and injustice, and combating climate change. The 17 SDGs is an expansion from 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to mobilize action from the international community inaddressing systemic challenges across economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The adoption of the goals shows the commitment of the international community in dealing with the impacts of economic development on society and the natural environment. Yet, as detailed in this volume, the United Nations (UN) adoption of SDGs has also sparked academic debate particularly about the importance of goal-setting as a key global governance strategy.

The <scp>SDGs</scp>: A change agenda shaping the future of business and humanity at large

Private philanthropic foundations—nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations with assets provided by donors for socially useful purposes—have become key political actors in global sustainability governance. Their collective efforts amount to over USD 112 billion for the implementation of the United Nations (UNs)’s ambitious plan to deliver on seventeen interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This corresponds to about a quarter of governmental contribution through official development assistance for the same purposes. Many of these foundations implicitly or explicitly aim to foster global justice, through, for example, empowering women, reducing inequalities, and promoting democracy. They thus act as justice agents shaping the substance and practice of justice in global sustainability governance. But what does this direction of private money into supporting global justice norms really mean? This question deserves scrutiny, especially against a context of diverse and contested meanings of justice and because philanthropy—beyond an act of giving—is often an exercise of power. Using critical discourse analysis of texts produced by selected foundations that are key funders of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, this paper examines how private foundations frame global justice and with what implications for sustainability governance.

Energy indicators for sustainable development

Interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals

To Achieve a Sustainable Blue Future, Progress Assessments Must Include Interdependencies between the Sustainable Development Goals

INTRODUCTION – TOBACCO CONTROL AS A DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY In May 2017, just months before the end of her second term as Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan spoke about championing the WHO’s mission to fight tobacco use as one of her proudest achievements in office. What was surprising was the justification that followed. Dr. Chan did not focus on the usual costs associated with smoking – the millions of premature deaths globally, the US$ 1.4 trillion wasted annually in healthcare expenditure and lost productivity, or the human suffering brought by the host of cancers, heart diseases, and respiratory diseases caused by tobacco use. Instead, she declared that ‘tobacco is a deadly threat to global development’, affecting ‘every country on every level and across many sectors – economic growth, health, education, poverty, and the environment’ [1]. The slogan ‘Tobacco – a threat to development’ became the theme of the 2017 World No Tobacco Day. This was not the first time that tobacco has been recognised by the public health community as posing a threat ‘to the cause of social and environmental justice’, rather than just being a matter of individual health [2]. In 2015, the magnitude of the tobacco epidemic was acknowledged in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [3]. The agenda, which encompasses 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), directly addresses the importance of tobacco control in SDG Target 3.a, calling for the strengthening of ‘the implementation of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control [WHO FCTC] in all countries’. The FCTC, adopted in 2003, was the first legally binding multilateral international public health treaty. It covers the production, sale, distribution, advertisement, and taxation of tobacco, setting an evidence-based framework of minimum requirements for the signatory states in controlling tobacco products [4]. The FCTC – as of May 2019 – was legally binding in 181 ratifying countries. While in most high-income countries (HICs) the implementation of the FCTC has advanced markedly, in some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) the progress has been much slower [5, 6]. This is particularly alarming given that in 2018 four out of five smokers (or 880 million out of 1.1 billion smokers) lived in LMICs [7]. Drawing on evidence and examples from LMICs, in this article we explore key synergies between the SDGs and tobacco control. We demonstrate that strengthening tobacco control is not only relevant for achieving SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), but also for broader social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development encompassed in several other SDGs [8]. We also point to the agenda of the transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) as a fundamental obstacle to achieving the SDGs and, more widely, to continued public health progress. To conclude, we argue that in order to drive progress in sustainable development, especially given the interference of TTCs, international tobacco control networks need to be further strengthened in LMICs. These processes need to be accompanied by greater cross-disciplinary collaboration, especially between the fields of tobacco control and development studies.

The recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the much broader Sustainable Development Goals has given further impetus to the debate on the nexus between the multiple sectors of policy-making that the Goals are to cover. The key message in this debate is that different domains—for instance, water, energy and food—are interconnected and can thus not be effectively resolved unless they are addressed as being fully interrelated and interdependent. Yet while this overall narrative is forcefully supported in the new UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are the main part of this agenda, many Goals still remain sectoral in their basic outlook. This now requires, we argue, a new focus in both policy and research on the nexus between different Sustainable Development Goals, especially with a view to reforms in the overall institutional setting that is required to sufficiently support such a nexus approach. This article thus examines the nexus approach in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and identifies multiple avenues for its institutionalisation in global governance.

In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an “integrated and indivisible” set of policy objectives with the aim, among others, to unite the diverse and vast system of international organizations under one shared normative agenda. And yet, have these SDGs really become such an integrative force in global governance? Our conclusion here is negative, and our research suggests that the SDGs have not lived up to these high expectations. We find instead that the 17 global goals have not been taken up by a substantial group of international organizations, and some organizations rather cherry-pick those goals that best fit their own agenda and interests. To overcome these challenges and to fulfill the promise of integrated global sustainability governance enshrined in the SDGs, we propose three urgent actions: first, to further push the use of the SDGs across all international organizations, in particular regional organizations outside the United Nations system; second, to facilitate better collaboration across policy domains; and third, to focus attention on those SDGs that are so far “left behind.”