1st Edition
Transforming Multilateral Diplomacy The Inside Story of the Sustainable Development Goals
Transforming Multilateral Diplomacy provides the inside view of the negotiations that produced the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Not only did this process mark a sea change in how the UN conducts multilateral diplomacy, it changed the way the UN does its business. This book tells the story of the people, issues, negotiations, and paradigm shifts that unfolded through the Open Working Group (OWG) on SDGs and the subsequent negotiations on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, from the unique point of view of Ambassador Macharia Kamau, and other key participants from governments, the UN Secretariat, and civil society.
1 SETTING THE STAGE
What Are the Sustainable Development Goals?
Time for a Change
A Quick Guide to UN Negotiations
The Journey Ahead
2 MULTILATERALISM: COMPLEXITY AND INTRIGUES
Twenty-First Century Challenges to Multilateralism
Rebalancing Economic and Political Power
The Millennium Development Goals
The Need for a Paradigm Shift
The Tipping Point: Rio+20 and the Birth of the SDGs
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
3 GETTING STARTED: CREATING THE OPEN WORKING GROUP
Back to New York: Rio+20 Follow-up
Electing the Co-chairs
Initial Challenges
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
4 UNCERTAIN BEGINNINGS
Playing the Long Game to Educate, Depoliticize and Level the Playing Field
The Stocktaking Process
Changing Alliances
Expanding Horizons
The Elephants in the Room
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
5 THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Reading the Room
State Actors
Non-State Actors
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
6 THE USE OF PROCESS AND DRAMA
A Bird’s Eye View of the SDG Negotiations
Strategies and Tactics
The End Game
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
7 THE BIRTH OF THE GOALS
Goals 1–6: Updating and Enhancing the MDGs
Moving beyond the MDGs: Energy, Economic Growth,
Employment and Equality for the New Agenda
Urbanization, Consumption Patterns, Climate
and the Environment
The Enabling Environment
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
8 PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE SDGS AND THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA
Beginning Anew
Changing Dynamics
The Politics of a Declaration
"Tweaking" the Targets
Means of Implementation and the Global Partnership: Almost a Disaster
Follow-up and Review: Another Elephant in the Room
The End Game
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
9 TRANSFORMING OUR WORLD
Launching the Goals
Ownership in Implementation
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
10 THE LEGACY OF THE OPEN WORKING GROUP ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Lessons Learned
Negotiating Processes Matter
Biography
Macharia Kamau, as Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Kenya to the UN, served as Co-Chair of the OWG on the SDGs and the Co-Facilitator of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. In 2014 he was awarded the Gold Medal Award for Environmental Diplomacy from the International Council of Environmental Law and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Pamela Chasek is professor of political science at Manhattan College. She is the executive editor of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a reporting service on UN environment and development negotiations, and she reported from every meeting of the OWG on SDGs. She is the author and editor of Global Environmental Politics, The Roads from Rio, The Global Environment in the 21st Century, and Earth Negotiations.
David O’Connor served, from 2003 to 2015, as Chief of the Policy and Analysis Branch, Division for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN where he led a team of policy researchers who provided the analytical direction and substanceto the UN’s work on sustainable development, supporting the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals.
“The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 was a defining moment in United Nations history and no one is better placed than Ambassador Macharia Kamau to tell the story of how we achieved this transformative vision for a better world.” —Ban Ki-moon, Eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations
“An inside look at the drama of the negotiations, and the creation of a new UN development paradigm.” —Shannon Orr, Bowling Green State University
