The achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals will require all hands on deck. It will require different sectors and actors working together in an integrated manner by pooling financial resources, knowledge and expertise. In our new development era with 17 intertwined Sustainable Development Goals and 169 associated targets as a blue-print for achieving the sustainable Future We Want, cross sectorial and innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships will play a crucial role for getting us to where we need by the year 2030.

Partnerships for sustainable development are multi-stakeholder initiatives voluntarily undertaken by Governments, intergovernmental organizations, major groups and others stakeholders, which efforts are contributing to the implementation of inter-governmentally agreed development goals and commitments, as included in Agenda 21, the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, the Millennium Declaration, the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) entitled “The Future We Want”, the Third International Conference on Small island Developing States, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Sustainable Development Goal 17, which reads “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development”, recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships as important vehicles for mobilizing and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies and financial resources to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, particularly developing countries. Goal 17 further seek to encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.

This present document is the fourth edition of a report that has been prepared by the Division for Sustainable Development of UN-DESA as a follow up the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, as an effort to provide status of progress multi-stakeholder partnerships and voluntary commitments have in realizing sustainable development.

This current 2016 edition reviews a number of action networks and multi-stakeholder partnerships, with a particular focus on how they support the theme of the 2016 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) - “Ensuring that no one is left behind”.

Information in the report is largely based on submissions from the Partnerships for SDGs online platform, which was originally developed following the Rio+20 Conference in 201. The platform was recently redesigned ahead of the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015.

The overall objective of the online platform is for spurring partnerships engagement in support of the SDGs, as well to function as a tool to inform stakeholders on initiatives carried out by multi-stakeholder partnerships in support of the SDGs, track their progress, and share new and innovative ideas, including challenges faced in implementation.

The platform currently showcases some 2,100 global, regional and local multi-stakeholder partnerships and voluntary commitments in support of all Sustainable Development Goals. Many of the initiatives has emerged from various sustainable development conferences, including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, and the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, held in Samoa in 2014.

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