Roundtable “Promises and pitfalls of accelerating SDG implementation – National implementation of the SDGs” – 5 July 2023

Virtual Roundtable Series of the SDG Taskforce of the ESG Project on “Promises and pitfalls of accelerating SDG implementation”

Second roundtable on ‘National integration of the SDGs’ 5th July, 2023, 13:00-14:00 Central European Summer Time (CEST), Zoom

Description
The SDG Impact Assessment published in 2022 has shown that the political impact of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has so far largely been discursive. With only limited impact on institutions and even less on legislation, policies, and resource allocation, the transformative force of the 2030 Agenda remains constrained. That said, some SDGs are incrementally moving political processes forward, with much variation among countries, sectors and across levels of governance. This suggests that for both scholars and practitioners more efforts have to be taken to further embed the SDGs into practice. The incremental change detected in the SDG Impact Assessment indicates that it takes time until globally agreed policy goals and norms lead to tangible effects on the ground.
The ESG Taskforce on the SDGs formed five Working Groups in 2022 on 1) Global Governance, 2) National Integration of the SDGs, 3) Sub-National Initiatives, 4) Private Governance and Partnerships, and 5) Education and Learning.

As part of a Taskforce-wide series on the “Promises and pitfalls of accelerating SDG implementation”, Working Group 2 will organize the second roundtable on the theme of “National integration and implementation of the SDGs”. It will focus on the question of where and how change is taking place in national policy-making, and under what conditions these developments can generate and accelerate the ongoing sustainability transformation up to 2030 and beyond. In particular, we aim to look into promises and pitfalls of SDG integration and implementation and identify enabling and constraining factors for accelerating current ambition levels to implement the global goals.

Roundtable Interventions:

• Valentina Botero, Public Policy Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate, National Planning Department, Colombia
• Mark Elder, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan
• Eszter Szedlacsek, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Bob Webb, Australian National University, Australia
• Zakaria Zoundi, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada

Roundtable Hosts:

• Montserrat Koloffon, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Sabine Weiland, European School of Political and Social Sciences, Catholic University Lille, France