Sustainable Development Governance

Sustainable development is the promise of a political response to a number of issues, and governance is the coordination of that response. Governance is therefore the way in which sustainable development is built. Its objective is to encourage the transformation of societies and to guarantee “well-being”, according to the commitments made at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and reformulated in 2015 at the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Sustainable development governance institutions have changed relatively little since Rio 1992 and their status has been eroded by the mixed results observed since. However, we live in the era of decentralised initiatives, “alliances” and “coalitions for change” that bring together, on an ad hoc basis, public and private actors from both the North and the South for specific sustainability goals. Sustainable development evolves as much outside of its institutions, as within the framework defined by these institutions. Focusing on the production of “solutions”, these initiatives are a valuable contribution to the overall objectives of sustainability. They do not, however, eliminate the need to build a collective representation the issues from the outset, which is part of the mandate of the institutions.

IDDRI's goal is to describe the transformations of the sustainable development in its institutional and non-institutional components, and to organise the debate on its achievements with respect to the overall Agenda 2030 objectives.