Abstract

There are two elements to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, Partnerships for the Goals: (1) efforts to improve the implementation of Agenda 2030 and (2) efforts to improve collective action globally in pursuit of sustainable development as envisaged by the SDGs. If taken as distinct components, the first phrase might suggest itself as relating to the implementation of the other sixteen SDGs – or perhaps sustainable development as a more generic objective (as broadly expressed by Agenda 2030) – whereas the latter phrase might indicate the re-energizing of a more substantive, and perhaps overarching, architecture of global collaboration. As this chapter will explore, SDG 17 is paradoxical in several important respects and, to the extent that it underpins the SDG agenda more broadly, is emblematic of the tensions at the heart of the SDGs, especially with respect to the normative context in which the SDGs are situated. For SDG 17, that context – and its situation therein – is particularly contested and contestable. Moreover, a focus on trade, investment, and voluntarism excludes and omits other important building blocks of human rights, rule of law, and civil society engagement.