This article takes stock of the 2030 Agenda and focuses on five governance areas. In a nutshell, we see a quite patchy and often primarily symbolic uptake of the global goals. Although some studies highlight individual success stories of actors and institutions to implement the goals, it remains unclear how such cases can be upscaled and develop a broader political impact to accelerate the global endeavor to achieve sustainable development. We hence raise concerns about the overall effectiveness of governance by goal-setting and raise the question of how we can make this mode of governance more effective.

A recent meta-analysis on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has shown that these global goals are moving political processes forward only incrementally, with much variation across countries, sectors, and governance levels. Consequently, the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains uncertain. Against this backdrop, this article explores where and how incremental political changes are taking place due to the SDGs, and under what conditions these developments can bolster sustainability transformations up to 2030 and beyond. Our scoping review builds upon an online expert survey directed at the scholarly community of the ‘Earth System Governance Project’ and structured dialogues within the ‘Taskforce on the SDGs’ under this project. We identified five governance areas where some effects of the SDGs have been observable: (1) global governance, (2) national policy integration, (3) subnational initiatives, (4) private governance, and (5) education and learning for sustainable development. This article delves deeper into these governance areas and draws lessons to guide empirical research on the promises and pitfalls of accelerating SDG implementation.

As SDG implementation lags behind, this article explores 5 governance areas asking how to strengthen the global goals.

Scientists often argue that today's efforts towards sustainability in cities call for a strong exchange on knowledge with non-scientific actors. But do urban practitioners think the same way? Do they see the need for scientific support in their work? In our research, we directly asked these questions to urban practitioners. This article evolves around their answers and describes the activities we conducted in order to start the necessary discussion with them.

Given the challenges cities are facing in their efforts towards sustainability, we scrutinize if urban practitioners believe that scientific knowledge can support them in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and if, how. To find evidence, we conducted a ‘co-design’ approach in Future Earth in terms of knowledge production, targeting at German cities. In consequence, the aims of this article are twofold. First, we aim at describing the implementation of the co-design process itself as a potentially useful tool for the interaction with urban practitioners and the evaluation of their specific needs. Second, we present the main results of the co-design process and its contribution for SDG implementation in cities. Combining the two aims, we argue for novel research approaches that allow for more collaborative activities as well as for adequate funding opportunities in the light of urban sustainability transformations.

Co-design to support SDG implementation in cities towards sustainability transformations.