Conclusion: Key Challenges for Global Governance through Goals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Biermann ◽  
Norichika Kanie
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Institutional Arrangement ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Policy Integration ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Setting Process ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Development Goals

This chapter summarizes some key findings of the book, discuss the challenges for, and opportunities of, the Sustainable Development Goals by identifying several conditions that might determine their successful implementation, and also suggest some possible avenues for further research. The approach of “global governance through goals”—and the Sustainable Development Goals as a prime example—is marked by a number of key characteristics, including its detachment from the international legal system, weak institutional arrangement, global inclusion and comprehensive goal-setting process, and granting much leeway to national choices and preferences. Those characteristics are reflected in the challenges for implementation, including those of developing indicators and institutional arrangements, tailoring implementation at national or stakeholder levels, and securing policy integration. Further research is needed in addressing these challenges, which requires inter- and transdisciplinary research development.

Governing through Goals

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Distinct Type ◽  
Institutional Arrangement ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Book Studies ◽  
Core Characteristics

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals as an integral part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals mark the most ambitious effort yet to place goal setting at the center of global governance and policy. This book is the first book addressing global governance through goals, asking three sets of questions. First, the book studies in detail the core characteristics of goal setting in global governance, asking when it is an appropriate strategy in global governance and what makes global governance through goals different from other approaches such as rule making or norm promotion. Second, the book analyze under what conditions a goal-oriented approach can ensure progress toward desired ends; what can be learned from other, earlier experiences of global goal setting, especially the Millennium Development Goals; and what governance arrangements are likely to facilitate progress in implementing the new Sustainable Development Goals. Third, the book studies the practical and operational challenges involved in global governance through goals in promoting sustainability and the prospects for achieving such a demanding new agenda. The book revealed that the approach of “global governance through goals”—and the Sustainable Development Goals as a prime example—is marked by a number of key characteristics, but none of those is specific to this type of governance. Yet all these characteristics together, in our view, amount to a unique and novel way of steering and distinct type of institutional arrangement in global governance.

Introduction: Global Governance through Goal Setting

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norichika Kanie ◽  
Steven Bernstein ◽  
Frank Biermann ◽  
Peter M. Haas
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Unique Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Governance Strategy

This chapter lays out a research agenda to assess conditions, challenges, and prospects for the Sustainable Development Goals to pursue this aim. First, the chapter discusses goal setting as a global governance strategy. Second, to contextualize the Sustainable Development Goals, it discusses the unique nature of the modern challenges that the Sustainable Development Goals must confront and review the historical and political trajectory of sustainable development governance, including the evolution from a primarily rule-based to a more goal-based system and the experience of the earlier Millennium Development Goals. Third, the chapter reviews the negotiating history of the Sustainable Development Goals. Then, the chapter elaborate on how the chapters are organized to address the three questions that guide the book.

The Sustainable Development Goals and Multilateral Agreements

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arild Underdal ◽  
Rakhyun E. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Governance System ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Overall Performance ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores goal setting, as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals, as a governance strategy for reforming or rearranging existing international agreements and organizations so as to enhance their overall performance in promoting sustainable development. It discusses the political and entrepreneurial challenges peculiar to bringing existing international institutions into line, and identifies the conditions under which goal setting could be an effective tool for orchestration. The chapter concludes that, because of their ecumenical diversity and soft priorities, the Sustainable Development Goals are not likely to serve as effective instruments for fostering convergence. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides neither an overarching norm that can serve as a platform for more specific goals nor an integrating vision of what long-term sustainable development in the Anthropocene means. In the absence of such an overarching principle and vision, the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on global governance will likely materialize primarily as spurring some further clustering of existing regimes and organizations within crowded policy domains. The Sustainable Development Goals cannot be expected to generate major architectural reforms that will significantly reduce the fragmentation of the global governance system at large.

scholarly journals The emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals and policy integration: Friend or foe?

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 1371-1390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen ◽  
Arthur L Dahl ◽  
Åsa Persson
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
National Level ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Good News ◽  
Policy Integration ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Policy Integration ◽  
Development Goals

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the full Agenda 2030 in which they are embedded are aspirational and intended to be both transformational and integrative in a number of ways. The need for integration across policy domains is stressed throughout the agenda. The Sustainable Development Goals are also accompanied by an emerging system for follow-up and review centered on a long list of indicators that are intended to enable countries to be accountable towards their citizens. There is, however, in the accountability literature indication that some accountability mechanisms can be counterproductive for integrative policies. This paper is centered around the question whether an accountability regime, and if so how, is compatible with a high degree of policy integration both conceptually and in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. We approach this question through looking both at the literature on integrative governance and some of the central concepts it covers such as (environmental) policy integration and mainstreaming, and the accountability literature. This enables us to provide an analytical framework for evaluating the potential of the emerging accountability regimes for the Sustainable Development Goals to enhance more integrated policy making and action. We conclude that there are little or no strong hierarchical elements of accountability relationships at the global level which can be good news for more integrative policies – but only if there is a strong sense of shared responsibility among actors at all levels, available information on the types of behavioural efforts that support integration, and accountholders that take an active interest in integration. At the national level, there may be hierarchical accountability mechanisms with sanction possibilities that may discourage integration. Here, those who hold actors to account can counteract this if they have deeper understanding of the underlying interlinkages among the goals and targets, and based on this, engage in accountability mechanisms.

scholarly journals Crime and victimisation in the era of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

2021 ◽  
Vol 317 ◽  
pp. 01001
Author(s):  
Robert Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The United Nations

Crime and victimisation have reached epidemic proportions. By fostering sustainable development within the social, economic and environmental spheres, the United Nations envisaged the strengthening of crime prevention and justice. However, within the global North/South divide there is little reason to assume that criminological and victimological interventions, development programmes or economic reforms can ever fully resolve the underlying causes of many victimological harms that affect developing or developed countries, unless and until they lead to greater freedom, equality and justice. Intersecting inequalities and social and economic exclusion highlight the importance of context and the complex geopolitical, institutional and ideological landscapes that gave rise to this global agenda. Together with the associated challenges for the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a critical appraisal of the nexus between crime, victimisation, justice and sustainable development on account of the gravest threat to humanity, namely climate change and environmental degradation, remains a functional imperative for research, policy and practice.

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