Goals

13 Conclusion: Key Challenges for Global Governance through Goals

Frank Biermann and Norichika Kanie

As numerous commentators have suggested, 17 Sustainable Development Goals can be seen as an unprecedented step to advance and strengthen a novel type of governance that will guide and “orchestrate” public policies and private efforts over the next 15 years. While there have been predecessors—notably the Millennium Development Goals—the new Sustainable Development Goals are different and unique in their broad coverage and specific characteristics. Yet, as critics also rightfully pointed out, it is far too early to fully assess the eventual effectiveness of this new approach of setting global universal goals on sustainable development. At the time of this writing, the Sustainable Development Goals are barely one year old. In chapters 1–12 of this volume, our group has thus offered nothing more than a first analysis and assessment of the evolution, rationale, and future prospects of the Sustainable Development Goals as examples of a novel type of “governance through goals.”

In this concluding chapter, we summarize some key findings of this volume, with a view to general implications for governance through goals as a novel mechanism of world politics. In addition, we discuss the challenges for, and opportunities of, the Sustainable Development Goals by identifying several conditions that might determine their successful implementation. We also suggest some possible avenues for further research.

Governing through Goals

As emphasized throughout this volume, the approach of “global governance through goals”—and the Sustainable Development Goals as a prime example—is marked by a number of key characteristics. 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.

First, it is important to note that governance through goals is detached from the international legal system. The Sustainable Development Goals are not legally binding, and the instrument that established the goals at the global level—a resolution by the UN General Assembly—is in no way intended to grant legal force to the goals. Accordingly, there is no further ratification process, and governments are under no legal obligation to formally transfer the goals into their national legal systems. This distinguishes these types of goals from other goals or targets on sustainable development issues that have been clearly enshrined in legally binding treaties, for example under the regimes on the protection of the stratospheric ozone layer or marine environment. However, this also does not prevent some Sustainable Development Goals from possibly becoming part of legal regimes that are agreed upon elsewhere, including subglobal legal systems. For example, Goal 13 on climate change is essentially a referral to the legally binding climate convention and its 2015 Paris Agreement.

Instead of legal systems, measurability is at the core of governing through goals. By measuring progress using indicators, countries and actors can be compared. Leaving actors free to attain goals and targets, individually or by utilizing networks, while measuring and comparing their progress is a unique characteristic of governance through goals.

Second, governance through goals, as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals, functions through weak institutional arrangements at the intergovernmental level. These arrangements are different, for example, from the complex institutional mechanisms that have been created for the more specific governance domains of climate stability, ozone layer protection, or biodiversity preservation. The institutional oversight over implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the global level has been left rather vague, and will now be fulfilled by a High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development that in itself is new and still has to prove its effectiveness (see in more detail Bernstein, this volume, chapter 9; Biermann 2014). Sustainable Development Goal 17 addresses broadly the need to build up a global partnership for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, somewhat comparable to the Millennium Development Goal 8. However, there are also fundamental differences between both goal-setting processes. The Millennium Development Goal 8, for instance, was less focused on voluntary commitments than the current discourse around Sustainable Development Goal 17 seems to suggest. In addition, global partnerships for specific goals—and possibly even more so for specific targets—will most likely emerge, and some are already in existence, such as on health, water, oceans, and sustainable consumption and

production. All these issue-specific partnerships can provide some global oversight and steering mechanisms that can support implementation of the goals over the next 15 years.

Weak global institutional arrangements, however, do not necessarily imply a low likelihood of successful implementation of the goals. It is especially the bottom-up, nonconfrontational, country-driven, and stakeholder-oriented aspects of governance through goals that its supporters cite as a key success factor for these goals, given that they had to be agreed—and will have to be implemented—in a highly diverse and divided state system where global multilateral agreement on detailed legally binding standards has proven to be difficult in recent years.

Third, interestingly, the Sustainable Development Goals are not the result of a broader strategic planning process at the global level. As we laid out in chapter 1 in more detail, the first proposal essentially dates back to only 2011. When the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development followed this proposition a year later and decided to elaborate a set of Sustainable Development Goals by 2015, few would have expected this mechanism to become the central element of the post-2015 development agenda. Of course, there had been some previous discussion on how to address the remaining tasks and challenges of the Millennium Development Goals that were to expire in 2015. And in May 2013, the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda submitted an indicative list of 12 goals and associated targets that helped to set the pace for the following discussion on the post-2015 development agenda. And yet this was seen in the beginning rather as a process for “post Millennium Development Goals,” with limited goals and targets; few have foreseen the central role that the Sustainable Development Goals have eventually taken within the UN system. In a sense, the Sustainable Development Goals have become the central element of the 2030 agenda almost by coincidence, owing to the evolution of the global negotiations around 2014 when the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals became the only major intergovernmental forum to discuss the post-2015 development agenda.

Fourth, the new approach of governance through goals works through global inclusion and comprehensiveness of the global goal-setting process. Unlike the earlier Millennium Development Goals, the new Sustainable Development Goals address both industrialized and developing countries. Conceptually, this approach also turns countries in North America, Europe, East Asia, and Oceania into “developing countries” that have to bring forward plans to transform their societies toward more sustainable

development paths. Again, unlike the earlier Millennium Development Goals, the new Sustainable Development Goals cover the entire breadth of the sustainability domain to more or less equal extent, thus combining a focus on economic development and poverty eradication (the core of the Millennium Development Goals) with a strong concern for social justice, better governance, and environmental protection and resource efficiency. This is an important development in global agenda setting. Even though conferences such as the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development were attended by numerous heads of state and government, sustainable development as such had not been on the main agenda in UN affairs before—as evidenced, for example, by the relatively low practical standing of the Commission on Sustainable Development in the UN system. Yet with the Sustainable Development Goals, this might now have changed, and sustainable development might now have received a status that puts it on an equal footing with the more traditional international economic agenda. With the new Sustainable Development Goals, after 40 years, the integrative concept of “sustainable development” has now finally become the core agenda for the United Nations with its new strategy of global governance through goals.

Fifth, inclusion and comprehensiveness also extends to the origin of the new Sustainable Development Goals in the period 2012–2015. While the earlier Millennium Development Goals were essentially elaborated within the UN Secretariat—even though in the context of the Millennium Declaration and with various inputs by governments (Loewe 2012; Manning 2010; McArthur 2014)—the new Sustainable Development Goals were agreed upon in a public process that involved input from at least 70 governments as well as numerous representatives of civil society. It is important to note that this process of formulating the goals was spearheaded by middleincome countries from the South—especially Colombia and Guatemala— and could draw on broad participation by civil society, including numerous online fora. In short, this is not a list of goals made up by bureaucrats selected by the UN Secretary-General, as the Millennium Development Goals have essentially been.

Sixth, as a consequence of the preceding points, governance through goals, as exemplified by the Sustainable Development Goals, grants much leeway to national choices and preferences. Even though no fewer than 169 targets have been agreed upon at the global level to guide implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, many of these targets are

qualitative and leave maximum freedom for governments to determine their own ambition in implementing the goals. Even when quantitative and clearly defined targets have been chosen—including, for example, the goal of completely freeing the world from hunger by 2030—governments can still rely on the nonbinding nature of the goals, or take recourse to lack of support by the international community in fulfilling the goals and targets. So, in effect, governments retain maximum freedom in interpreting and implementing the goals if they so choose. This inbuilt leeway helps to explain why, for example, countries that constitutionally enshrine the discrimination of women and girls have still supported a global goal on achieving gender equality (Goal 5), or why countries with strong neoliberal economic beliefs could agree on a goal to reduce national and international inequality (Goal 10). In the end, this relatively flexible approach allowed all governments to agree on the complete package of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets, turning them into a universal vision and guideline for public policy over the next 15 years.

Yet the character of the new Sustainable Development Goals as nonbinding global aspirations with weak institutional oversight arrangements and high levels of national discretion does not imply that our book concludes with an outright negative, pessimistic assessment. Instead, we do see potential for a global governance strategy through goals, as represented by the Sustainable Development Goals, to advance public policy and private efforts toward an ambitious sustainability agenda—admittedly also in light of the lack of alternatives given the current state of global governance and intergovernmental policies that are so far insufficiently responding to the challenges we face in the Anthropocene (Biermann 2014; Young et al., this volume, chapter 3). Much will depend on the future policy development around these goals over the next years, from the evolution of the global institutional arrangements to the ambition of the eventual national and subnational implementation process. Following this line of reasoning, in the following sections we lay out several conditions that could help, we believe, the new goals turn into a success story.

Challenges in Implementation

Further Strengthening the Goals through Indicators and Commitments To start with, even though the 17 Sustainable Development Goals are supported by no fewer than 169 more concrete targets, many of these targets remain comparatively vague. Most are also purely qualitative, leaving much room for interpretation and hence weak implementation.

For this reason, it will now be important to concretize the Sustainable Development Goals as much as possible through appropriate indicators, combined with formalized commitments by governments at national level. As Oran Young (this volume, chapter 2) has pointed out in more detail, the success of governing through goals depends on the increasing formalization of commitments, the establishment of clear benchmarks, and the issuance of formal, measurable pledges by governments, all of which may, in the words of Young, “cause embarrassment or loss of face” in case of noncompliance. Just as the regime-building toward the 2015 Paris Agreement under the climate convention started with national pledges (socalled Intended Nationally Determined Contributions), a reverse approach of governance through goals could expect that national-level commitments now follow the broad global agreement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

In addition to national commitments, the struggle for a demanding governance system continues also at the level of indicators that must effectively support the broad ambition expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals. Ideally, this process will go beyond traditional means of national reports and reviews and include other types of review systems (Bernstein, this volume, chapter 9). One question will be whether the “ecumenical diversity and soft priorities” (Underdal and Kim, this volume, chapter 10) evidenced in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals will be sufficient to effectively guide behavior and set priorities—without an integrating vision and principle of what long-term sustainable development in the Anthropocene means. This problem led Underdal and Kim to forcefully argue for a basic norm (Grundnorm) of sustainability that would provide such muchneeded prioritization and “orchestration” in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.

Strengthening Global Governance Arrangements In addition, a major challenge for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals rests on the appropriate governance arrangements at the global level, including on how those are integrated into, or aligned with, existing institutions. As pointed out by Young (this volume, chapter 2), devising effective procedures to track progress is a key element of success for a global governance strategy that relies on goal-setting. Importantly, unlike international legal regimes, governance through goals starts with aspirations that are not necessarily coupled with existing or new governance arrangements (see also Underdal and Kim, this volume, chapter 10; Gupta and Nilsson, this volume, chapter 12).

One central new body here is the new High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. As discussed in detail in chapters 1 and 9 in this volume, governments agreed in 2012 on creating this forum, and in 2015 gave the forum “a central role in overseeing a network of follow-up and review processes at the global level” (UNGA 2015, par. 82) for the Sustainable Development Goals.

One element of monitoring progress on the Sustainable Development Goals will be a new global sustainable development report that should be, following the United Nations, forward-looking, policy-oriented, and reporting not only on areas of success but also on policy gaps and shortcomings. The report shall serve as a key element in the science-policy interface under the High-level Political Forum, as a key instrument in monitoring the road between 2015 and 2030 (Bernstein, this volume, chapter 9). And yet, in 2012, the details and function of the High-level Political Forum were not clearly laid out, and hence have been subject to further intergovernmental negotiations within the United Nations since then (Bernstein, chapter 9, this volume). Similarly, how the High-level Political Forum could function as an “orchestrator” in global sustainability governance remains an open question (Bernstein, chapter 9, this volume; Underdal and Kim, chapter 10, this volume).

In addition, key for the success of the Sustainable Development Goals is reliable and predictable resource mobilization (Bernstein, this volume, chapter 9; Voituriez et al., this volume, chapter 11). Sustainable Development Goal 17 is explicitly targeted at a “global partnership.” This global partnership will need to include additional funding from public sources, as has been the case for the global partnership under the Millennium Development Goals. Yet public-private and private-private partnerships and other types of action networks will also be important, probably more so than they have been for the Millennium Development Goals. Since the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, 2,110 voluntary commitments have been made. Their success is difficult to predict. Much will depend, for instance, on institutionalized review mechanisms and clear and quantifiable benchmarks that measure performance under the global partnership to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (Bernstein, this volume, chapter 9; Voituriez et al., this volume, chapter 11). In addition, leadership of individual actors—including pioneering countries, as has been the case of Norway in the area of health governance—might be crucial in specific circumstances (Andresen and Iguchi, this volume, chapter 7).

Partnerships do not need all to be global in scope. The specific character of the Sustainable Development Goals leaves much space for flexibility in implementation; this also makes it likely that much of the implementation will occur through more limited partnerships among fewer countries that probably will also include nonstate actors. Such partnerships can also cover only a small number of actors in issue-specific “coalitions of the willing” that might focus on only specific targets. One potential example of this kind of partnership is the recent development of “Champions 12.3,” a global coalition of actors that seeks to help implement target 12.3, to cut in half per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level and reduce food losses along production and supply chains (including postharvest losses) by 2030 (http://champions123.org; see also Andresen and Iguchi, this volume, chapter 7). A company-level initiative has been recently taken, for example, by Unilever. An example of national-level stakeholder initiative is the “OPEN 2030” project in Japan, which tries to support the Sustainable Development Goals through a multi-stakeholder partnership (http://open2030project.com). The 2030 Agenda for Sustain). The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development also encourages opportunities for learning, including through reviews, sharing best practices, and creating online platforms at regional and global levels.

On the one hand, problem solving through such partnerships may better fit complex problems as they are typical in the Anthropocene. Complex teleconnections and the nonlinear nature of the problems (which are specific features of the Anthropocene; see Biermann 2014 and Young et al., this volume, chapter 3) might be better addressed in a manner that leaves room for maneuver and rapid adjustment in more flexible governance arrangements that might be focused on particular goals (Kanie et al. 2014). On the other hand, such novel partnerships around the Sustainable Development Goals must not repeat the mistakes and failures of the many multisectoral, public-private partnerships that were agreed upon as “type II outcomes” of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (Biermann et al. 2007; Bäckstrand et al. 2012). In short, much will thus depend on the effectiveness of the emerging network of implementation mechanisms and partnerships that will emerge to help turn the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals into concrete progress by 2030.

Adapting Global Ambitions to National Circumstances and Priorities The Sustainable Development Goals aspire for universal application and are thus global in nature. Yet they are also expected to be adapted to the

national and local context by taking into account the national reality, capacity, and other national contexts, including level of development and existing national and local policies. This is a significant departure from the earlier Millennium Development Goals, which had been set at the global level and were hence often criticized as a “one-size-fits-all” approach (Andresen and Iguchi, this volume, chapter 7). Yet as Gupta and Nilsson highlight (this volume, chapter 12), the “translation” of global and midterm (2015–2030) aspirations into national policies requires significant capacities at the national level, including functioning governance systems. Partially for this reason, governance in itself has now become a specific Sustainable Development Goal, with a number of targets that call upon governments to improve their own performance in measurable ways (Biermann et al., this volume, chapter 4).

Most countries have existing national development goals and plans that could be modified or upgraded to take account of the new global aspirations laid down in the Sustainable Development Goals. Such modification, however, will also need to include political debate and decisions over the vision, aspirational role, and position of a country, including the allocation of its domestic resources. For example, what should be the concrete target for countries as diverse as Norway, Nicaragua, or Nepal with regard to the global target to halve food waste per capita by 2030 (as set out in target 12.3 under Goal 12)? Should they go for a national waste reduction target per capita that equals the global average, or should they have deeper targets— or less demanding ones? The Sustainable Development Goals could thus help support the design of national policies within a framework of globally agreed ambitions and vision.

A key to linking the global aspirations as they are laid out in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their national adaption is the measurement of progress. This will require clear and broadly accepted indicators (Pintér et al., this volume, chapter 5). Once policies and measures by different countries that vary in wealth, context conditions, and priorities can be assessed by the same indicators, progress can be globally compared; international “naming and shaming” can then help motivate countries to nudge their programs forward.

The same holds in situations where a country adopts a similar kind of national target but in a different timeframe, or when a country relies on different criteria, or when a national target is much lower than the global aspiration now laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals. Goals 16 and 17 address the process through which translation between global and

national goals and targets could be formulated. Yet again, these processes will also require national adaptation and adjustment.

Successful implementation thus requires effective translation between global aspirations and national contextual policies and/or aspirations. Potential pitfalls are the broad selectivity of the Sustainable Development Goals when addressed in national policy development. Some initial studies have been conducted in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Japan to contextualize the Sustainable Development Goals in national situations (on Sweden, see Weitz et al. 2015; on Japan, see POST2015 2016; on the Netherlands, Lucas et al. 2016). Some developing countries have taken steps ahead, especially those that have a national mechanism for the Millennium Development Goals in place that they can now adapt for the Sustainable Development Goals. Although the fundamental difference between the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals must be recognized, some experiences in implementation, along with institutional arrangements in some cases, can be a powerful resource to draw on.

The same applies for the level of intergovernmental institutions and organizations, notably the United Nations. Now that clear goals and targets have been set at the UN level, all UN agencies and the supporting national development agencies can start moving forward toward streamlining their funding and policies in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals.

However, there is no doubt that the success of the Sustainable Development Goals will not be possible with government action alone. As pointed out in the UN General Assembly declaration, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development addresses all stakeholders, not only governments. As forcefully argued by Gupta and Nilsson (this volume, chapter 12), implementation of Sustainable Development Goals must be undertaken by all actors in society, in a process that is eventually “owned” by all. Thus, civil society organizations, the private sector, and even each individual citizen are called upon to work toward implementation of the goals. Ideally, this might even lead to a new type of social movement for the Sustainable Development Goals or for individual goals, as suggested by Young (this volume, chapter 2). In addition, the private sector might need to play a more active role than in the past. For the case of water governance, for instance, Yamada (this volume, chapter 8) argues that the success of goal-based governance in this area will largely depend on the level of corporate engagement with governments, and that the UN Global Compact will play an important role in this regard.

Ensuring Effective Policy Integration in Implementation Effective implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals requires in many cases systems for issue-oriented problem solving that go beyond existing frameworks and institutions. A close eye on interlinkages is important here, with a view toward an integrated approach for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, as emphasized by several studies (Griggs et al. 2014; Sachs 2015; Stafford-Smith et al. 2016) and the Global Sustainable Development Report (UN DESA 2015). All argue for an integrated implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals to avoid negative trade-offs and to create synergies (see also Haas and Stevens, this volume, chapter 6; Gupta and Nilsson, this volume, chapter 12).

This is a prerequisite for the success of a global governance strategy for sustainability as such. There is no doubt that all concerns addressed under the eight Millennium Development Goals have been of utmost importance for development, with the overall great success stories in areas such as poverty eradication and prevention of hunger and malnutrition (even though attribution of these successes to the existence of these goals remains debatable). Therefore, it is vital that these primary concerns have primacy of place again in the Sustainable Development Goals, with the central ambition of freeing the world of hunger within the next 15 years. Yet equally important is the preservation of fundamental life-supporting functions of planet Earth. For example, all success in poverty eradication under the previous development programs might be negated if the ambitious goals under the climate convention and its 2015 Paris Agreement are not met. Only if we manage the earth’s life-support systems—some of which have now crossed or are close to crossing so-called “planetary boundaries”—are further sustainable improvements in human development possible. Social sustainability and social justice are crucial variables as well. In the case of food security, for example, theoretically there is enough food to feed all people on earth: The key problem is not the absolute amount of food, but its distribution and management.

For these reasons, an integrated approach for the three dimensions of sustainable development is indispensable. Such integration is required at all levels of global governance, from global to regional, national and local levels, and cutting across sectoral borders. For most of the countries this will require, for example, a reorganization of their national administrations and government systems. Integration in research also requires more interdisciplinarity, the breaking down of the silos of disciplinary knowledge, and the development of novel types of transdisciplinarity that combine specialist

and stakeholder expertise, along with better architectures for an effective science-policy interface.

Improving the Adaptability of Governance Mechanisms A final condition for the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals is the adaptability of the related governance arrangements to deal with changes that are likely to take place over the next 15 years. Governance through goals in this regard may have to be more flexible to adjust to new situations. Yet how such flexibility will be maintained after now-emerging further institutionalization remains an open question.

For example, we have witnessed numerous changes since 2001 when the Millennium Development Goals were established. The economies of countries such as China and India have grown rapidly, which has lifted millions after millions of people out of abject poverty—yet also further increased local environmental pollution combined with growing global emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. The unequal speed of development eventually resulted in the further diversification of interests among developing countries, which limited the coherence of the Group of 77, their central coalition in multilateral negotiations. Progress in science and the development of better models and scenarios of the earth system showed the need to change human behavior in order to avoid catastrophic events; and gradually the knowledge was shared. More nonstate actors participate in decision making at various levels of governance than before. Thanks to the rapid development of information and communication technologies and social media, citizens are now linked and networked with each other at a speed much faster than ever before. Many of these recent developments, however, were not accurately predicted in 2000. One simple example is the approach in the Millennium Development Goals to use the percentage of people with landline telephone connections as an indicator for communication and information improvements—which became quickly obsolete by the spread of mobile communication in barely a decade. The next 15 years will undoubtedly experience similarly major changes. Governance arrangements and core institutions for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals must thus be dynamic and flexible enough to respond to unpredictable changes over the next 15 years and beyond. Incorporating foresight processes is hence needed.

Outlook for Future Research Questions

Taken together, the information requirements posed by Sustainable Development Goals remain huge. These goals are a novel governance mechanism that is posing numerous new sets of questions for academic research and policy analysis.

To start with, the success of the Sustainable Development Goals will stand or fall with our ability to measure. To “measure what you treasure,” however, is not trivial. A key task lies here with the international and national communities of statisticians, but also many other research communities are required (Pintér et al., this volume, chapter 5). For example, how can you measure progress in better governance, more transparent policies, less corrupt administrations, or better rule of law—all elements of Sustainable Development Goal 16—without further efforts in improving the methods underlying the appropriate indicators, along with increasing intergovernmental agreement on what indicators are most meaningful in assessing process (Biermann et al., this volume, chapter 4)?

Second, the new approach of governance through goals poses important new research questions regarding the embedding and integration of goals at the global level into existing governance arrangements; the effects the goals at the global level may have on other governance systems; and the question of to what extent further governance reforms are needed to cope with the resulting challenges. We have touched on these questions in a number of chapters (for instance, chapters 3, 8, 9, and 12), but see great further research needs in this field. “Orchestration” in global governance might be one overarching concept to understand the function of the Sustainable Development Goals—even though some might argue that a better description for governance through goals might even be conductorless jazz, given the bottomup nature and emerging properties within a common vision!

Important will also be the academic support for the integration of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals. While the Millennium Development Goals were essentially related to a traditional development agenda, and other goal-setting processes have prioritized, for example, environmental concerns, the Sustainable Development Goals now attempt to integrate all three traditional dimensions of sustainable development. Essentially, all 17 Sustainable Development Goals touch upon all three dimensions at the same time, though to different degrees. This is even truer when acting to attain a goal. Integrating these dimensions with their different agendas and rationales in the implementation of these goals is a key challenge for decision-makers and

other stakeholders at all levels of governance; yet it is also an important issue that the research communities, in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research projects, need to address. The emerging focus of the research community on the food-water-energy nexus, for example, reflects the importance of an integrated approach for sustainability, as well as a stronger focus on the social dimension.

In the end, there is no doubt that the Sustainable Development Goals pose one of the most ambitious, but at the same time also most daunting political challenges of our time—for both global and local governance. As the UN Secretary-General aptly summarized after conclusion of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate: “We are the first generation that can end poverty, and the last one that can take steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. With the adoption of a new development agenda, sustainable development goals and climate change agreement, we can set the world on course for a better future.” Novel types of governance through goals, we believe, will certainly be a vital part of this ambitious agenda.

References

Bäckstrand, Karin, Sabine Campe, Sander Chan, Ayşem Mert, and Marco Schäferhoff. 2012. Transnational Public-Private Partnerships. In Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered, ed. Frank Biermann and Philipp Pattberg, 123–147. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Biermann, Frank. 2014. Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Biermann, Frank, Man-san Chan, Ayşem Mert, and Philipp Pattberg. 2007. Multistakeholder Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Does the Promise Hold? In Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development. Reflections on Theory and Practice, ed. Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann and Arthur P. J. Mol, 239–260. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Griggs, David, Mark Stafford Smith, Johan Rockström, Marcus C. Öhman, Owen Gaffney, Gisbert Glaser, Norichika Kanie, Ian Noble, Will Steffen, and Priya Shyamsundar. 2014. An Integrated Framework for Sustainable Development Goals. Ecology and Society 19 (4): 49.

High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. 2013. A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations.

Kanie, Norichika, Steinar Andresen, and Peter M. Haas, eds. 2014. Improving Global Environmental Governance: Best Practices for Architecture and Agency. Oxon and New York, NY: Routledge.

Loewe, Markus. 2012. Post 2015: How to Reconcile the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? Bonn: German Development Institute.

Manning, Richard. 2010. The Impact and Design of the MDGs: Some Reflections. IDS Bulletin 41 (1): 7–14.

McArthur, John W. 2014. The Origins of the Millennium Development Goals. SAIS Review (Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies) 34 (2): 5–24.

Lucas, Paul, L. Kathrin Ludwig, Marcel Kok, and Sonja Kruitwagen. 2016. Sustainable Development Goals in the Netherlands: Building Blocks for Environmental Policy for 2030. The Hague: Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

POST2015, Project on Sustainability Transformation beyond 2015. 2016. Prescriptions for Effective Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Japan. Tokyo.

Sachs, Jeffrey D. 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. New York: Columbia University Press.

Stafford-Smith, Mark, David Griggs, Owen Gaffney, Farooq Ullah, Belinda Reyers, Norichika Kanie, Bjorn Stigson, Paul Shrivastava, Melissa Leach, and Deborah O’Connell. 2016. Integration: The Key to Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability Science. DOI:10.007/s11625-016-0383-3.

UN DESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. 2015. Global Sustainable Development Report 2015 Edition. United Nations.

UNGA, United Nations General Assembly. 2015. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Draft resolution referred to the United Nations summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda by the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session. UN Doc. A/70/L.1 of 18 September.

Weitz, Nina, Åsa Persson, Måns Nilsson, and Sandra Tenggren. 2015. Sustainable Development Goals for Sweden: Insights on Setting a National Agenda. Stockholm Environment Institute: Stockholm, Sweden. Working Paper 2015-10.