Abstract
As social and ecological problems escalate, involving stakeholder groups in helping solve these issues becomes critical for reaching solutions. The UN Sustainable Development Goal #17 recognizes the importance of partnerships and collaborative governance. However, organizing large multi-stakeholder groups (or partnerships) requires sophisticated implementation structures for ensuring collaborative action. Understanding the relationship between implementation structures and the outcomes is central to designing successful partnerships for sustainability. In the context of sustainable community plan implementation, the larger research project of which the results presented in this book chapter are one part of, examines how stakeholders configure to achieve results. To date, we have the data from a survey completed by 111 local governments around the world. The survey was offered in English, French, Spanish, and Korean. Seventeen integrated environmental, social, and economic topics are considered, including climate change, waste, ecological diversity, and local economy. Despite the prevalence of sustainable community plan implementation in local authorities around the world, there is scant empirical data on the topics covered in these plans internationally, the partners involved in implementation, and the costs and savings to the local governments that implement in partnership with their communities. The results presented in this book chapter show that sustainable community plans continue to be created and implemented in a diversity of communities around the world, are integrated in the sustainability topics that they cover, involve local organizations as partners in implementation, act as motivators of resource investment by the local government in community sustainability, and result in savings for the local government.
For more information about the project see https://uwaterloo.ca/implementing-sustainable-community-plans/.
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Acknowledgements
Other team members on this research project have helped with the survey design and data collection, including Dr. May Seitanidi (University of Kent, UK), Dr. David Runnalls (University of Ottawa, Canada & CIGI), Megan Meaney (ICLEI Canada), and Denise Yoon (Korea Institute—Center for Sustainable Development, Korea).
University of Waterloo Research Assistants: Amanda Chouinard and Aisha Stewart.
Funders for the survey presented in this chapter are Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and Mitacs.
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MacDonald, A., Clarke, A., Huang, L., Roseland, M., Seitanidi, M.M. (2018). Multi-stakeholder Partnerships (SDG #17) as a Means of Achieving Sustainable Communities and Cities (SDG #11). In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Handbook of Sustainability Science and Research. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63007-6_12
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