Implementing the Agenda 2030 – what is the role of forums?

ABSTRACT

The implementation of the Agenda 2030 and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) requires collaboration between actors from different sectors. One way of facilitating exchange between different actors are forums. This article investigates the contribution of different types of forums for SDG implementation. We use the case of Switzerland’s implementation of SDG 6 in the Global South to explore this question and rely on a small-N comparison of four forums. Based on a broad set of different empirical sources such as interviews, document analysis, and survey data, we characterize the forums according to important dimensions emphasized in forum research and use the forum characteristics to explain three types of first-order forum outputs: participation patterns, information exchange, and trust and procedural fairness. We observe that a mix of different forum characteristics accounts for different forum outputs. One forum that is actively promoting networking opportunities, for example, manages to reach many participants that are not reached by other forums. Furthermore, our results indicate that new types of forums that focus more on the implementation of the Agenda 2030 in general rather than single SDGs might become crucial to foster information exchange among actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Forums
• sustainable development goals
• agenda 2030
• implementation
• information exchange
• participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. www.aguasan.ch, www.sdsn.ch, www.shareweb.ch/site/Water, www.swisswaterpartnership.ch.

2. We defined technical information as information on technical or scientific aspects of the implementation or monitoring of the SDG 6 or related SDGs and political information as information related to political affairs that allows your organization to organize with others during the policy process and influences our organizations working priorities and strategies.

3. The interview guideline included one part on the main goal, the activities and the organizational structure of the forum. The second part included questions on the role of the forum regarding the implementation of the SDG 6, including the contribution of the forum (information exchange, connecting different actors, etc.), the general involvement of the forum in consultations and events around the SDGs and the differentiation of the forum in comparison to the forums studied.

4. We asked the actors to indicate to what extent their organization uses the services (participation in meetings and events, newsletters, online forums, etc.) provided by policy forums. (Scale: never, 10%, 30%, 50%, 70 or 90% of the services). For this study, we considered an actor to be a participant if it uses 30% of the services or more.

5. To assess procedural fairness the actors were asked to indicate their level of agreement for the following statements: 1) ‘All parties participating in the forum are treated fairly and consistently’, 2) ‘The discussions between the participants of the forum are civil, and marked by mutual recognition and respect’, 3) ‘The forums decisions are made adaptively in response to new information’ (Scale: 10%, 30%, 50%, 70%, 90% of the forums activities). To assess the level of trust the actors were asked to indicate to what share of participants the following statements apply: 1) ‘Are honest, forthright, and true to their word’ 2) ‘Have the same values and priorities that you do’ 3) ‘Have transparent motives and concerns’ 4) ‘Are willing to listen, and sincerely try to understand other points of view’ (Scale: None, Few, Half, Most, All). Both questions were only asked to participants that indicated to use at least 30% of the services of a policy forum.

6. www.aguasan.ch, www.sdsn.ch, www.shareweb.ch/site/Water, www.swisswaterpartnership.ch, SDSN Organizational Principles (2018), SDSN Membership Flyer, SWP Statues (2012), SWP Action Plan 2017–18, AGUASAN Report ‘Learning from a remarkable Community of Practice’ (2004).

7. WASH stands for Water, Hygiene, Sanitation and mostly covers targets 6.1 and 6.2.