Multi-stakeholder partnerships for the SDGs: is the “next generation” fit for purpose?

Despite mixed results in the past, multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) are considered important governance instruments for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This perspective discusses the ‘next generation’ of MSPs, comparing them to previous generations, and whether they can contribute to transformative change. The discussion is based on a first analysis of nearly 500 MSPs collected in the Transformative Partnership 2030 project, comprising a subset of initiatives on the Partnership Platform maintained by the United Nations. Three observations are made. First, only a small number of the 7000 or so entries on the Partnership Platform are active MSPs. Second, international organizations and national government are the main partners in MSPs. The most common functions are related to soft governance such as knowledge dissemination and information exchange. Third, MSPs mainly connect environmental and social SDGs, notably between climate change, biodiversity, health and education. They are less focused on the economic goals, addressing the drivers of unsustainable behavior. The perspective recommends an update of the Partnership Platform, more research on how to harness potential synergies across SDGs in MSPs and more attention to meta-governance of MSPs, at the UN level.


Introduction
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require governance instruments that can deal with connectivity across issue areas: Mitigating climate change, for example, has positive effects on halting biodiversity loss and helping poverty reduction. It also necessitates collaboration across whole of society. In most countries, national governments are the main source of authority, capacity and responsibility to address the drivers and impacts of sustainability challenges. However, national governments rely on the resources and cooperation of private companies, sub-national authorities, citizens and other non-state actors to implement change. Indigenous people, for instance, are according to some estimates, the custodians of some 22% of Earth's surface and 80% of remaining biodiversity, making them central players in anything related to nature conservation (World Bank, 2008).
Few governance instruments epitomize connectivity across actor types more than multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs). MSPs can be loosely defined as voluntary collaborative arrangements between private, public and civil society actors working toward a common public good (Schäferhoff et al., 2009), and have become "embedded in the fabric of global governance" (Andonova et al., 2022, p. 257). Already in 2002, governments decided at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to rely on so-called 'Type II' partnerships to deliver the Millennium Development Goals (Hale & Mauzerall, 2004). Despite disappointing outcomes of the Type II partnerships (Pattberg et al., 2012), governments reaffirmed their belief in and support for partnerships during the Rio+20 summit in 2012, calling them "one of the most participatory and effective mechanisms to implement sustainable development and enhance international cooperation'" (quote in Bäckstrand & Kylsäter, 2014). Their enthusiasm for MSPs was reiterated in 2015, when the 2030 Agenda institutionalized MSPs, primarily under SDG 17.16 and 17.17, as a key vehicle for revitalizing the global partnership for sustainable development.
The 2030 Agenda process has led some observers to suggest that there is a 'next generation' of MSPs to achieve the SDGs (Bäckstrand et al., 2022). The next generation of partnerships could, according to some, contribute to systemic transformations, such as decarbonizing energy systems or creating sustainable agriculture (Horan, 2022a). The goal of this perspective article is to reflect on the latest iteration of MSPs and their potential to become effective vehicles for implementing the SDGs and transformative change, based on work carried out under the Transformative Partnerships 2030 project. 1 We start by briefly describing why MSPs have emerged as promising mechanisms for achieving the SDGs. Subsequently, we describe and analyze the effectiveness of the 'next generation' of partnerships. Finally, we conclude with reflections on the gap between potential and actual implementation, suggesting pathways to accelerate SDG impacts.

The promises of multi-stakeholder partnerships
The reinvigorated enthusiasm for MSPs to facilitate SDG implementation takes place against the backdrop of a wider phenomenon in global governance referred to as 'multistakeholderism' (Scholte, 2020). In international regimes built to govern health, climate change and biodiversity, among others, traditional multilateral processes are opening up for (and are even challenged by) networked forms of collaboration with various degrees of institutionalization between public, private and civil society actors (Hsu et al., 2015;Pattberg et al., 2019;Schäferhoff, 2014; see also Bäckstrand & Kuyper, 2017 on "hybrid multilateralism"). There are at least two commonly used explanations for the rise of multistakeholderism. 2 First, a functional perspective suggests that multistakeholder partnerships and other non-state actors fill a governance gap or deficit created by traditional multilateral processes. It holds that international regimes such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are unfit for the purpose of combating large, complex and transnational global challenges and multi-stakeholder partnerships, for instance, can fill the gaps. Multi-stakeholder partnerships can thus improve the performance of global sustainability governance in terms of effectiveness. What is more, they do so by promising to include a broad set of stakeholders, which could improve representation and eventually increase the democratic legitimacy of the international system. For researchers adopting a functional perspective, questions are primarily related to if, what and under what conditions partnerships can improve the problem-solving capacity of global sustainability governance and what the consequences are in terms of legitimacy.
Second, a more critical perspective on multistakeholderism takes cues from political economy research and suggests that multistakeholderism is a natural extension of the ongoing neo-liberalization in environmental governance, suggesting that the public represented by the state is of waning importance and is replaced by other actors, in particular private multinational corporations. Multistakeholderism is from this perspective not so much a challenge or replacement of the existing regimes but rather an extension or reconfiguration of current power-relations (Mert, 2014). A related point of view, in line with realist international relations theory, holds that multi-stakeholder partnerships are primarily initiated and funded by countries and private organizations in the Global North, and are simply another vehicle for some governments to pursue their interests outside the UN negotiations. For critical scholars, the focus is on power and representation, aiming to understand who is in the driving seat and why (Chan et al., 2019).

What we know about the "next generation" of MSPs
How does the 'next generation' of MSPs compare with previous generations? For answers we look at, what to our knowledge is the most comprehensive repository for existing initiatives addressing the SDGs. The repository is called the Partnership Platform and is developed and maintained by the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) (UNDESA, 2022a). The Partnership Platform was originally developed following a mandate from the outcome of the 2012 Rio+20 Conference, and it has subsequently been aligned with the 17 SDGs. Currently, it serves as an online global registry of voluntary commitments and partnerships that support the implementation of the SDGs (UNDESA, 2022a). While the name of the platform suggests that it focuses on partnerships, and that a review process by the UN Secretariat is conducted before "admission" to the platform, in practice, the only criteria used for approving the partnerships and further initiatives seeking registration are that they are aligned with the SMART criteria (UNDESA, 2022b). Consequently, the Partnership Platform contains a wide variety of some 7,000 entries, of which only a sub-set could be defined as MSPs.
The Transformative Partnerships 2030 project uses the Partnership Platform to develop a database on MSPs called the "Transform 2030 dataset" (Widerberg et al., 2023). The project focuses on MSPs that are transnational, active (or recently finished), have some basic level of institutionalization, and address more than one SDG. Based on the process of sifting through nearly 7000 entries on the Partnership Platform and first analysis of the database, we have found three main insights about the 'next generation' of MSPs.
First, the Partnership Platform contains few currently active MSPs. Out of nearly 7000 entries available on the platform at the time of data collection (February 2022), over 15% were duplicates. From the 5800 unique entries that remained after removing the duplicates and excluding those entries that failed to provide a website, some 2500 entries were found that address more than one SDG. After applying criteria based on partner-constellation, place of headquarter and implementation, and level of institutionalization, only some 473 entries remained that bear resemblance to MSPs (for methodological details, see Widerberg et al., 2023). Out of those 473, only about half are currently active (ca. 57%), and an additional 22% have recently concluded their activities. Less than one third showed no activity at all, other than information indicating a launch in a few cases. Among the MSPs which provide information on start and end date, 75% of them expects to be finished before 2023. Some 17% of the active MSPs were started before 2015, suggesting that among the 'next generation,' about 1 in 5 was part of previous generations. Some MSPs are even likely to be partnerships that were formed in the context of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, and have been able to rebrand and adapt their work to continue operating in the context of Agenda 2030.
Second, public organizations are the most frequently occurring partners in MSPs that primarily engage in "soft" governance. A majority, approximately 67% of the MSPs in the dataset, count at least one international organization as a member. The same holds for national governments, where 63% of the MSPs report them as members. Private business and local authorities are much less mentioned as partners, even less than non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and science and academia. The MSPs primarily engage in governance functions related to knowledge dissemination, tech transfer, capacity building and training, which, albeit important for creating the necessary conditions to achieve the SDGs might be less urgent than service provision on the ground, including financing. Such data points question the inclusivity and transformative potential of partnerships as we are at the midpoint of the SDGs implementation timeline and where interlinked crises have led to stalled and even reversal of years of SDG progress (IISD, 2022).
Third, if creating synergies between environmental, economic and social SDGs is a pre-condition for being transformative, then MSPs need to better connect issue areas related to the drivers of environmental problems. Our analysis of SDGs that MSPs connect suggests that climate change (13) and marine and terrestrial biodiversity (14 and 15) are most frequently connected, together with good health (3) and quality education (4). Least connected are SDGs on consumption and production (12), innovation (9) and peace and justice (16), suggesting that the MSPs are primarily focusing on the addressing the symptoms rather than the drivers of unsustainable human behavior.
The three observations made based on collecting and analyzing the Transform 2030 data set corroborate previous research on MSPs. For instance, our findings are congruent with Pattberg and colleagues' (2012) research that demonstrated how a large chunk of Type II partnerships were inactive five years after being launched, that public organizations (IOs and national governments) are central agents as partners in MSPs, and that soft forms of governance-primarily knowledge creation and dissemination as well as capacity building-remain key functions for MSPs. The novelty in the new data and analysis concerns the transformative potential of MSPs, focusing on governing the connection between SDGs and adding to the debate around a more holistic approach to governing the 2030 Agenda in terms of interactions (e.g., synergies and trade-offs) and MSP characteristics (e.g., functions, partners) (Horan, 2022a). It also speaks to research focusing on the interactions between SDGs, where nexus perspectives make an important contribution (Nilsson et al., 2014), where little is known whether and how MSPs match the characteristics and challenges that emerge from the interrelated nature of the SDGs (Horan, 2022b).

Going forward: recommendations to improve the transformative potential of MSPs
Partnerships provide a promising institutional setup for bringing the much-needed diversity, expertise, additional resources and creativity to the table when it comes to implementing the SDGs across varying context. However, as the previous discussion has highlighted, the 'next generation' of MSPs registered on the Partnership Platform is not (yet) fit for purpose. In particular, we find alarmingly low levels of activity and a high number of time-bound targets that end before 2030. We also observe that the transformative potential of MSPs, stemming mainly from their ability to connect functionally interlinked SDGs, is currently under-utilized. To improve the ability of MSPs to contribute to achieving the SDGs and transforming broader socioeconomic systems, we recommend the following: First, UN DESA and ECOSOC, in collaboration with the entire UN system, should direct more efforts toward eradicating non-active, non-functioning and non-effective partnerships in the current database, while highlighting success cases. Second, additional research is urgently needed that would identify success factors for transformational change on a partnership level, for instance, if and how MSPs can become vehicles for connecting SDGs; third, the same is true for understanding what works on a meta-governance level, i.e., the entire system of partnership governance. Finally, more theoretical and empirical works should be directed toward supporting partnerships as instruments of societal transformation. If we can harness the full potential of MSPs, achieving the SDGs might still be possible.