What community development and citizen participation should contribute to the new global framework for sustainable development

Abstract

In September 2015, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) replaced the millennium development goals. The ambitions of the SDGs are to transform the current aid architecture and promote environmental, economic and social well-being on a global scale. The process of how this new global framework for sustainable development has been designed is unique in terms of the extent of opportunities for people's participation. This article considers what lessons the debate on community development can offer the new global development framework. First, we analyse existing attempts to include ‘voices’ from the local level in the process of formulating the SDGs, drawing on existing literature on critical community development and citizen participation. We find that the inclusion of citizen perspectives in the SDG process was largely tokenistic. Building on this critique, we go on to explore the propositions within the critical community development literature about an approach to implementing the SDGs that could be truly transformative. Finally, we consider the insights from the critical community development literature in relation to the findings of a global network of participatory research that aimed to influence the SDG design and implementation. We explore how citizen's participation in the new global framework could become more significant through deeper and more strategic forms of representation and engagement. In conclusion, we return to examine the prospects and practical requirements for a more bottom-up and transformative approach to implementing the new global framework.

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