Getting to 2030: Negotiating the Post‐2015 Sustainable Development Agenda

• Published date: 01 April 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12149
• Date: 01 April 2016

Getting to 2030: Negotiating the Post-2015

Sustainable Development Agenda

Pamela S. Chasek,* Lynn M. Wagner, Faye Leone,

Ana-Maria Lebada and Nathalie Risse

The United Nations Member States set a very high bar

for themselves at the Rio+20 conference in June 2012:

reaching agreement among 193 countries on a broad

‘post-2015’sustainable development agenda that could

enhance international coordination on all aspects of

human and planetary well-being. However, at a point

in history when States were increasingly failing to

reach consensus on key decisions, they made history

by agreeing on a course that could ‘transform our

world’, through ‘an agenda of breathtaking ambition

and scope’. This article reviews the two negotiating

tracks to develop the post-2015 outcome –the work of

the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs), which originated out of the decision

taken at Rio+20; and the agreement to launch a post-

2015 development agenda to replace the Millennium

Development Goals. The f‌inal outcome from these two

processes represents a f‌ine balance among competing

interests and concerns. The article sets the stage for a

closer examination of the results of these negotiations.

We begin our examination of the ‘original intent’of the

post-2015 agenda by reviewing the negotiation of the

SDGs and the post-2015 development agenda, with

attention to their similarities and differences. The arti-

cle concludes with a focus on challenges for the imple-

mentation stage, based on the themes that emerged

during the negotiations.

INTRODUCTION

The United Nations (UN) Member States set a very high

bar for themselves at the Rio+20 conference in June

2012: they agreed to negotiate, among all 193 countries,

a broad agenda that could enhance international

coordination on all aspects of human and planetary

well-being in the post-2015 period. At many moments

during the three years that followed, consensus on a

post-2015 sustainable development agenda seemed all

but impossible. However, at a point in history when UN

Member States were increasingly failing to reach con-

sensus on key decisions, they made history on Sunday

evening, 2 August 2015, by agreeing on a course that

could ‘transform our world’, through, in the words of

the delegate from India, ‘an agenda of breathtaking

ambition and scope’.

1

This article reviews the experience of two negotiating

tracks that developed the post-2015 outcome. The Open

Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development

Goals (SDGs) originated out of the decision taken at

Rio+20.

2

A second track agreed to launch a post-2015

development agendato replace the Millennium Develop-

ment Goals (MDGs), which were drafted following the

2000 Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.

As we argue in this article, the f‌inal outcome from these

two processes represents a f‌ine balance among compet-

ing interests andconcerns between developed and devel-

oping countries as well as between the past and the

future of the sustainable development agenda.

We f‌irst examine several principles that came into play

during the negotiations and that framed the decision

makers’choices. We then review the negotiation of the

SDGs and the post-2015 development agenda, noting

their similarities and differences. We conclude with a

focus on the challenges that remain on the implementa-

tion level, based on the principles and themes that

emerged during the negotiations.

This research draws on the authors’personal observa-

tions of the 13 sessions of the OWG on SDGs and the

eight sessions of the intergovernmental negotiations on

the post-2015 development agenda, all of which took

place from 2013 to 2015. Our participant observation

method included direct observation of all formal and

informal sessions as writers for the Earth Negotiations

Bulletin, a publication that has provided objective

reporting of sustainable development negotiations since

the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The authors also conducted

informal interviews with negotiators and the UN

Secretariat during the course of these meetings, and

augmented the research with formal interviews of key

* Corresponding author: Pamela S. Chasek.

Email: pam@iisd.org

1

A.M. Lebada et al., ‘Summary of the Seventh and Eighth Sessions of

Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development

Agenda: 20 July–2 August 2015’, 32:20 Earth Negotiations Bulletin

(2015), at 23.

2

Report of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Develop-

ment (UN Doc. A/CONF.216/16, 2012), at paragraph 248.

ª2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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RECIEL 25 (1) 2016. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12149

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