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.

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