Prospects for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals

About the lecture

The presentation focuses on the prospects for implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It analyzes the social infrastructure — the political and institutional processes — by which more effective governance is possible. It appraises the role of different international organizations in delivering each SDG on its own, as well as the potential for capturing the interlinkages between them. It finds a mismatch between the International Organizations (IOs) responsible for coordinating the SDGs and their resource capabilities. It concludes with suggestions for reassigning responsibility to IOs with greater capabilities at promoting SDG attainment, and for linking SDGs.

About the speaker

Peter M. Haas is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D in 1986 from MIT, and has been at UMASS since 1987. He has had visiting positions at Yale University, Brown, Keio University, Oxford, and the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin. He has published extensively on international relations theory, constructivism, international environmental politics, global governance, and the interplay of science and international institutions at the international level. He has consulted for The Commission on Global Governance, the United Nations Environment Programme; the governments of the United States, France, Switzerland and Portugal; United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the World Resources Institute.