Unlocking sustainability transformations through partnerships for the SDGs: opening the black box of nexus governance processes

As windows of opportunity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) close, the recognition that sustainability transformations are required, rather than slow-paced incremental progress, has grown. Partnerships, especially those working on the simultaneous implementation of SDGs, are at the forefront of identifying and managing SDG interactions (a.k.a. nexus governance) and are often endorsed as promising governance mechanisms able to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. However, despite their popularity, the exact problem-solving and policy-design processes (tools, methods, and practices) employed within partnerships to govern SDG interactions and enable sustainability transformations remain in a black box. This paper suggests that non-technocratic fitting processes, managing potential synergies, trade-offs, and conflicts among SDGs, are necessary to achieve coherence and enable the required transformations in sustainability governance. These processes should allow stakeholders to accurately identify the governed system’s structure, and guide policy design and interventions to effectively target the system’s leverage points. Accordingly, an index is advanced to assess the transformative capacity of MSPs as a function of the fit between their problem-solving and policy-design processes and their transformative ambitions. Through a survey design, the landscape of partnerships’ processes is mapped to determine gaps and performance variations. A comparative analysis of similar partnerships with contrasting levels of transformative capacity is conducted through case studies. The findings are relevant for effective meta-governance nudging partnerships into a transformative governance mode.