Two new publications - Stakeholder Engagement Overview and Guide and Enhancing Governance to Help Address Vulnerable Groups

The United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development – the HLPF - is the main United Nations platform on sustainable development. Its central role is the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the global level.

In support of those ambitions, Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future produces – at times with partners – a series of think-pieces and knowledge-enhancing papers.  Known as ‘The SDG 2030 Series,’ Stakeholder Forum, in collaboration with the Belmont Forum funded Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (DR3) project team at the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, has produced two new publications.

Issue 3 of the SDG 2030 Series is Stakeholder Engagement Overview and Guide-  by Elisabeth Butler, Re-Energize DR3.

This third in the series recognizes the emergence of ‘stakeholder democracy’ as a vital approach to both policy development and multi-stakeholder partnership for helping to deliver global agreements – in particular the Sustainable Development Goals, also known as the Global Goals.

The stakeholder concept came from the 1992 Earth Summit process, where for the first time it enabled nine unique stakeholder voices to be heard.  In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, agreed to by UN Member states, added several additional stakeholder groups.

The reality is that any engagement with stakeholders around policy - or for developing a partnership - should always start by mapping out the relevant stakeholders. This new publication adopts the point of view that a relevant stakeholder is any stakeholder that is impacted by a decision or can impact a decision.

Stakeholder Forum itself was established after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, as both a national multi-stakeholder platform in the United Kingdom, and then expanded in 2000 as a global multi-stakeholder platform that engages in major UN events and processes.

Issue 4 of the SDG2030 Series is Enhancing Governance to Help Address Vulnerable

Groups – Building Back Better, edited by Rene Marker-Katz and Cameron McBroom-Fitterer, Re-Energize DR3.

Issue 4 is the transcript of a webinar that was one of the official side events scheduled during the 2022 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, designed to link the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) agenda discussed at the 7th Global Platform to the 2022 High-level Political Forum’s theme of “Building back better from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) while advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” A link to the webinar recording found on the Stakeholder Forum YouTube channel.

This side event looked at adaptive governance capabilities at the national, sub-national, and local levels to enable equitable disaster risk reduction and resilience in development planning and development programmes, and compared a developed country and a developing country approach and what lessons might be gained on governance and approaches to vulnerable groups.

It recognised the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development's commitment to ‘Leave No One Behind,’ with a discussion around SDG 5 on Gender Equality and other vulnerable groups, and the critical role that sustainable development education - the focus on SDG 4 - can play in building stronger capacity within the research field in developing countries.

The ultimate aim of the discussion was to contribute to an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary agenda, where governments' plans for disaster risk reduction and resilience will lead to enabling equitable disaster risk reduction and resilience in development planning and development programmes.

We hope that each of these new papers will help to promote ideas and solutions to accelerate the delivery of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.