SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Professor Carolyn Evans 

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are an urgent call to action for all countries to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity. Goal 17, the last of the goals, is focused on partnerships. Acknowledging that to address these complex global challenges, we must bring together skills and resources from a range of sectors and disciplines. I’m pleased to explore the Sustainable Development Goals 17, partnerships for the goals, with two Griffith experts who have experience connecting and engaging with a range of partners to ensure the best outcomes for teaching and research. Today, I’m joined by professor Anne Bonner, head of Griffith School of Nursing and Midwifery, and associate professor Stephanie Schleimer, Director of the Griffith MBA.  

And would you like to start off by giving us a bit of an overview about what SDG 17 says? 

Professor Anne Bonner 

Well, that goal, Carolyn, is really about partnerships, and it’s about mutually respectful partnerships. And it’s across all sectors. And it’s at local, national and international levels. And I guess from my perspective, it’s really about what each of the partners bring to the situation and what they can learn from each other. It’s not one being dominant over the other. 

Professor Evans 

And Stephie, it comes last, what should we read into that? How do we understand the structure of the SDG? 

Associate Professor Stephanie Schleimer 

I think being last means you must be incredibly important. So, there’s lots of different structural ways that people have made meaningful sense of all 17 SDGs by themselves and in relation with one another. But the first 15 SDGs are really all about the ‘what.’ What are the core problems in the world? And the biggest challenges? And what are the types of solutions we need nationally and globally? Number 16 is all about how should institutions look. And what should the environments be like in order for us to have these wonderful, and like Anne said, these really new transformative partnerships. Number 17 is special because number 17, in so many ways, shows us how to do it. It shows us how to implement these big solutions to these global size problems. 

Professor Evans 

Stephanie you work in the business school. There’s a lot in this SDG about things that perhaps people who think about human rights and sustainability don’t always think about: taxes, trade, there’s a role for business. Sometimes people might think of businesses as not having the potential to be a force for good with the SDGs. But you think otherwise don’t you. 

Associate Professor Schleimer 

Yes, most definitely. And I think it is because these type of partnerships are just so different to anything that the business world has ever seen, it is really just about overcoming that red ocean competitive thinking. And we hate to say but misery loves company. The world’s biggest problems needs company to help with misery in the world. And business is going to play a key part in it. But if you think about all of the stakeholders involved as government, as civil society, there needs to be financial institutions, there needs to be philanthropists and donors, the education sector. So business is a core part, not the most important. Because equally, I think, every partner will contribute in meaningful, respectful and different ways to it. But business will play a key role in this as well. 

Professor Evans 

And Anne the health perspective here. Health always has to be trying to achieve things in partnerships. Can you talk us through some partnerships that you think are particularly important?  

Professor Bonner 

Look, I think partnerships are crucial to get those other sustainable goals achieved. Particularly those many of them interact directly with health, you know. Water security, food security, health and well being, you know, are all connected with health. And I guess the partnerships that have been successful have been at the local level, but also at the global level. For example, say the International Council of Nurses, actually partners with the UN and the WHO on all of these goals. And so, goals 17 is a living example of that global partnership in action. And it’s, you know, really been very important around health promotion, disease prevention, and during COVID. Well, that’s obviously a major factor that’s been involved in global partnerships. 

Professor Evans 

And when you were describing SDG 17 at the start, you made the really important point that it’s not just a local or domestic issue. It’s about respectful relationships between developed and developing countries on the global north and global South. It always sounds a bit strange in Australia to be talking about that because we don’t quite fit that paradigm. How do we try and make sure that those relationships are respectful and are not just one cultural country coming in and imposing its way of doing things on others? 

Professor Bonner 

I think it’s the attitude of the partners, and how they go into the relationship around the activity or the goal that they’re trying to achieve. And I think it’s about training some of the partners to know how to act in that situation. So that, you know, the respect does occur, and that there isn’t that dominance by one partner and saying well, I know your answer. Let me show you the way. And here you go, go away and do it. Because the partners have their contextual needs. And it’s that cap bringing together and I guess one of the projects that I’ve been previously involved in, was in Vietnam, and it was needing to be far more mutually respectful, because the context is so different between different countries. And yes, we each learn and gain from that relationship. 

Professor Evans 

And that’s a really important part of it isn’t it? It isn’t just one group coming in to do good to the other group. It’s two groups working together. That can happen domestically to on I think about our health group, and relationships with first people here in Australia. How do we try and make sure that when we partner with those communities, we do so in a way that’s not colonial or paternalistic? 

Professor Bonner 

Well, I think there is a lot of training. I’ve mentioned training already. But certainly, cultural safety training is paramount, and engaging with elders in the local communities in a respectful way. And this is what I found are First Nations people really want to be involved in a collaborative way. And not that colonial, white centric view of the world. And great things do occur. They take a while to develop these partnerships. And that’s important, too, is that partnerships are not sudden. It’s like developing any relationship. There’s rapport and trust to be developed. 

Professor Evans 

And they can’t be fly by night if they’re going to make real change. Stephanie, universities are part of this. We’ve just been talking about that in the context of First Peoples, which is really important. What are some examples that you’ve seen maybe here at Griffith? We obviously take partnerships really importantly. Where partnerships have been able to play a really big role in helping towards the content SDGs. 

Associate Professor Schleimer 

Yes. And I think it’s a lot of, referring to what Anne just spoke about, these respectful partnerships, and being so careful about how we are treating one another in these partnerships as well. And we find often that say a non-for profit organisation or business for-profit business joining these partnerships, may have very different reasons as to why they join compared to say a charity whose sole purpose exists to alleviate the cause that they’re so passionately fighting for. And a business might do it more for reputational reasons. So that I totally and utterly agree that this respect is one of the very key aspects. We are, I think, in general, at the education system around the globe, we are very blessed. We exist to create knowledge, we exist to distribute knowledge. And we are very good at governing those kind of partnerships, because compared to other partners, we are relatively neutral, very transparent. We live up to a high ethical standard. So, we make a very good partner in general, in any local or global partnership. And so here in Australia, we have some wonderful partnerships with other regions as well. So, we have, for instance, a program here with the International Water Institute, called the Wash at Work program. It’s mainly for tourist destinations around Indonesia, and Fiji. And it’s all about education about water, hygiene and sanity. But at the same time, it’s this really big stakeholder relationship where all these different parties, local governments, hotel chains, tourism associations, community organisations, and lots of really wonderful not-for profits are working for this greater cause of clean water access and hygiene and sanitation access for everybody. Because, especially in those regions, there is a disproportionate inequality for women and children for people with disabilities. So, there’s some lots of wonderful examples of these partnerships where we play that key role, that guiding role, the recommendation role as a university, because of who we are. 

Professor Evans 

I sometimes think that a university can play a convening role. We’re not direct competitors, with businesses, we’re not trying to take over the role of not for profits. So, it’s not just the knowledge but we have a certain neutrality that allows us to bring other folks together. 

Associate Professor Schleimer 

Yes. And a beautiful privilege as well as universities for diverse nature that we are around the globe. What brings us all together is this joy and this wonderful privilege that we have to educate, and to create knowledge for research and to distribute this knowledge. And, I often feel that being part of those partnerships, so for researchers around the world, publishing in articles, in magazines and policy papers and textbooks, that’s a wonderful fulfilment. And it’s a great distribution of knowledge, but to really use that knowledge in these partnerships, that’s really the purpose of creating impact on the world. And moving forward, I believe the most purposeful researcher and the contribution that we can give is this impact for us. That’s why we exist as educational institutions. 

Professor Bonner 

And I think it’s about, as you’re describing, the capacity building of others in that safe way through any endeavour whether it is directly in education, or it’s research around an activity. But it’s capacity building, and learning, that mutual learning from each other. Because while we might be, you know, supporting others to undertake research or education, or to learn from these sorts of things, we in turn, must be open and take this back into what we’re doing as well. And not seeing it from our Western perspective only. It enriches us as much as it does the others in the partnership. And certainly, I agree with you, in terms of, you know, water and food and clean air. That’s fundamental to life. And that’s all about health. And that’s, to me is where the goal 17 draws together. Those other goals. 

Professor Evans 

As we’ve been having these discussions about the various SDGs, one of the things that keeps coming up in all of them is that you can’t just pluck one out and say we’ll just work on that one. Because they’re all interconnected. 

Professor Bonner 

Absolutely they are. 

Professor Evans 

And interdisciplinarity therefore, we’ve got a partner inside our institution too. 

Associate Professor Schleimer 

Yeah, because most of these problems are just so large, and so multi layered, and blast well beyond our generation, and our children’s generation. So, it really needs a very different approach within universities and across universities, and really understand how we each can contribute in our own special and privileged ways that we have for our profession. 

Professor Bonner 

I do think that’s where we can learn from that, you know. I think perhaps our interdisciplinarity could be far greater than it already is. And I think that’s an opportunity for us across the university sectors. We do still operate in these silos. And we don’t have that cross partnership internally, which strengthens the capacity to go externally. 

Professor Evans 

Or, let’s be fair, we don’t always. So, I think we’re starting to see some of those things develop. I think you’ve seen some good examples Stephanie where interdisciplinary expertise has come together with external partners to do great things. 

Associate Professor Schleimer 

It is literally every single one of these SDG related partnerships required a multi stakeholder and a multidisciplinary approach. No matter within a university, across universities, across different levels of partners. And a great example is in the Pacific Islands, our Eco-adapt project that has come out of the climate action beacon, and it requires experts from micro economists to coastal engineers, to marine biologists, to planners, to social scientists to really study the aspects of how a community can really sustainably live in a close relationship with its natural environment? And it requires so many different angles to really understand and figure out how they can adapt from a social science point of view. How can they consume from the ocean, so from a marine biology point of view, without even worsely affecting biodiversity. You have coastal planners involved because of the water toxicity because of climate change. So, there’s so many different aspects to it, that once again link and SDG like climate change to at least seven others in this particular project. 

Professor Evans 

But it’s exciting, isn’t it? We have opportunities to teach, we have opportunities to learn, and we have opportunities to make a real impact on the world. If We get outside our own little boxes whether they’d be our own disciplines or our own institutions and work with others. So, Stephanie and Anne thank you so much for your time today.