Civil society participation in the UN Sustainable Development Goals

How can ordinary people, grassroots movements, and community organisations enact the UN’s Sustainabile Development Goals in local contexts? University of Queensland PhD candidate Joanna Horton (@joanna_horton) and ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow Dr Kiah Smith discuss their research on civil society participation in the implementation of the SDGs. For more on their work, see Dr Smith’s DECRA website Fair Food Futures.

Image credit: Joshua Lanzarini on Unsplash

In 2015, 193 countries committed to the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global agenda aimed at addressing major social, environmental, and economic challenges by 2030. That deadline is now only eight years away – however, most countries remain off-track to achieve the SDGs, and the UN Secretary-General has recently called for better global governance to “rescue” the 2030 Agenda. In Australia, there is no national plan for delivering on the SDGs, and a recent report by the Whitlam Institute found a lack of leadership, prioritisation, and coordination around SDG implementation.

One particularly important question concerns the role of civil society in putting the SDG agenda into practice. How can ordinary people, grassroots movements, and community organisations enact the SDGs in local contexts? Are there mechanisms to ensure the meaningful participation of these actors – in accordance with the SDG commitment to ‘Leave No One Behind’ – or are they locked out of the process?

The practical and empirical research gap on civil society and the SDGs

In 2020 and 2021, we undertook a systematic review of the academic and grey literature into civil society participation in the SDGs, comprising 209 internationally published papers. We found that over 90% of the papers reviewed were based on literature themselves, with very few reporting empirical findings. Among the empirical studies that did exist, qualitative methods slightly outweighed quantitative research.

The literature review also highlights that, while civil society engagement with SDG design, implementation, and monitoring is a cross-cutting topic, very few studies actually demonstrate how this is being progressed or achieved in different countries and sectors. Rather, civil society engagement is commonly discussed as a recommendation for reforms based on an analysis of gaps in implementation. That is, the majority of papers emphasise the important role of civil society for transformative change at the level of government SDG implementation, but very few outline best practice in this space.

Analysing implementation documents

With this gap in mind, we read and analysed six key policy documents relating to SDG implementation.* We wanted to discover the overarching approaches recommended for implementing the SDGs, and particularly how these approaches understand the role of civil society organisations.

We used inductive frame analysis to uncover the ‘problem-solution’ narratives of these documents: that is, how they presented the ‘problem’ of SDG implementation, and what their proposed solution was. The analysis also included consideration of the key vocabulary, concepts, metaphors, and imagery used in constructing these narratives. Our analysis revealed several implications for the ongoing policy challenge of implementing the SDGs.

No cohesive approach to implementation

The documents we analysed presented a number of different approaches to SDG implementation, many of which directly contradicted one another. For example, one approach focused on the responsibility of national governments in putting the SDG agenda into practice, by leveraging existing mechanisms such as national budgets and procurement processes. However, another approach emphasised the role of local governments as the ultimate agents of SDG implementation ‘on the ground’ – a role which might be compromised by interference or resource diversion from central governments. Other narratives focused on the key role of business in delivering on the Goals, while another foregrounded civil society – particularly the ’poorest and most vulnerable’ – as ultimate owners and agents of the SDG agenda. This lack of cohesion is in some ways unsurprising, as it reflects the diversity of documents analysed and the different positions of their authors. However, from a policymaking perspective, the lack of a clear overarching approach to SDG governance presents a challenge to implementation at all levels.

Whose partnership?

The rhetoric of ‘partnership’ in SDG implementation was common across all the documents analysed; in particular, this was often framed as a partnership between business, government/s, and communities. However, this concept has been the subject of heated controversy in the SDG context, with many critics pointing out that the flaws of assuming that the interests of corporations, civil society, and government are in alignment with one another, and with the agenda of sustainable development. For example, the recent UN Food Systems Summit – convened as part of the Decade of Action to deliver the SDGs – has been widely criticised for its shift towards a multistakeholder governance model whereby large corporations were included as key ‘partners’ in the process of designing and implementing food systems transformation. Many civil society organisations felt that they had been locked out of this process, and boycotted the Summit in favour of an alternative grassroots event. This example – as well as the many other critiques of multistakeholderism in the development policy context – suggests that a more critical approach to the concept of ‘partnership’ in SDG implementation is warranted.

Few concrete mechanisms for civil society participation

In line with the findings of the broader literature review, our document analysis found a lack of concrete measures to ensure civil society participation in the process of SDG implementation. Discussions of practical ‘action points’ for facilitating civil society participation often fell back on the partnership rhetoric outlined above, or else reduced the role of civic actors to providing feedback and/or supporting the existing implementation efforts of business or government/s. While a few of the documents acknowledged that civil society must ‘own’ and ‘drive’ the SDG agenda, this was cast in terms of a moral imperative rather than a concrete plan for action, and there were very few practical mechanisms identified to ensure the full participation of civic and grassroots organisations.

As we approach the 2030 deadline, the lack of attention paid to SDG implementation – both globally and in Australia – is set to become a more pressing policy issue. The question is not only whether the SDG agenda will be implemented, but how it will be implemented and by whom: without clear and decisive action to ensure that civil society organisations have a voice and a role in the process, further corporate capture is likely.

 * Key policy documents we analysed

Posted by Sophie Yates (@DrSophieYates)

IssuesPower to Persuadeinternational aid and development, United Nations