Do international organizations steer others towards sustainable development? Insights from the United Nations Regional Commissions

In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. A recently published article in Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations led by Utrecht University’s Melanie van Driel investigated if international organizations steer other actors towards these goals. The research focused on the United Nations Regional Commissions. “We find that international organizations have broadened their scope and are expanding their activities, but they face a number of challenges to becoming powerful orchestrators,” she says.

International organizations as ‘orchestrators’

States have not provided a comprehensive set of funds to achieve the SDGs, so the implementation of the goals relies mostly on indirect mechanisms. Additionally, the key coordinating entity for the SDGs, the High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development, has no binding legal power and is thus reliant on other actors, including international organizations, for implementation.

Interestingly, international organizations do not just contribute to the goals directly, for example by hosting projects. They are also expected to contribute indirectly, by steering other actors, including their Member States, business sector actors and even civil society towards the goals. Van Driel: “Right now, not much is known about how international organizations try to fulfill this role. Our research aims to fill this knowledge gap.”

To investigate the steering, or orchestrating, role of international organizations, the researchers looked at the United Nations Regional Commissions, which operate in different parts of the world.

Different steering roles

The researchers identified three main categories in which these commissions can steer actors toward the SDGs: agenda-setting, coordination, and support. However, their findings suggest that the commissions don't uniformly fulfill these roles.

In the realm of agenda-setting, the commissions strive to balance regional priorities with the overarching SDGs. In the field of coordination, they facilitate the exchange of experiences among various actors, but don’t necessarily steer towards a particular outcome. When it comes to providing support, their role predominantly conforms to existing demands rather than actively shaping them.

The roles played in practice differ from the ‘ideal’ role that these actors could play to steer towards coherent implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Van Driel: “The commissions could focus more on addressing potential trade-offs between parallel agendas. When they bring actors together in coordination efforts, they could do more to define the aim of these efforts and clarify how they relate to one another. When it comes to support, more can be done not just to respond to demand, but also to create demand for capacity-building for goals that are currently being neglected.’’

Integrating these changes has the potential to move the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals forward. However, “there will always be somewhat of a paradox here, given that global, regional and national priorities will always overlap partially, but are never going to match completely,” concludes Van Driel.