Side Event: Strengthening partnership enabling factors to foster transformative change – A global campaign towards and beyond the 2023 SDG Summit
The side event zoomed in on selected enabling factors, lessons learned and successful multi-stakeholder partnership examples from the UNECE Region to convey through an interactive exchange and learning format how cooperation and partnership between diverse stakeholder groups can tackle the complex challenges. Participants were able to share their own insights and experiences and discuss what role partnerships in the UNECE region can play in strengthening SDG implementation globally.
The event aimed to raise awareness of the partnership enabling factors; inspire action to build those enabling factors; and gather insights and experiences from various sectors and stakeholders. The discussions further informed the development of a study on the state of partnership enabling factors, including challenges to their incorporation, and what is required to build them up at scale, which was presented in a Partnership Symposium to be held in the margins of the SDG Summit in September.
Background
The 2030 Agenda Partnership Accelerator, Partnerships2030 and the Global Forum on SDG Advisory Bodies recently launched a campaign at the ECOSOC Partnership Forum aimed at raising awareness and supporting governments and stakeholders to develop partnership enabling factors that will develop, improve and scale up multi-stakeholder partnerships in support of the SDGs and beyond.
An ‘essential means of implementation’, collaboration across all sectors of society is fundamental to delivering the SDGs and tackling climate change. Only by understanding our shared interest – prosperous economy, thriving society and healthy environment – and by collectively applying the scale and diversity of resources brought by all sectors – from regulation and investment through capacity development and technical innovation – can we hope to deliver widespread transformational change.
While the case for collaboration has been made and won, implementation in the UNECE region and globally still lags far behind the rhetoric. Engaging business, and partnering across societal sectors, are extremely challenging, and in general take far too much time compared with the urgency of the threats and crises our planet faces.
The UNECE region, with its extensive economic power and links to global supply chains is critical to SDG achievement. How UNECE businesses operate, and the policies passed by national government or EU Institutions often have ramifications well beyond regional borders. The questions on the table: What role can partnerships play to strengthen sustainable business practices and inform policy development in support of SDG implementation? What are enabling factors for partnerships?; and how can they be scaled up?
Partnerships2030, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH; UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA); The Partnering Initiative; Global Forum for National SDG Advisory Bodies
