Governance through goals in action: How multi-stakeholder partnerships translate and connect the SDGs

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect a ‘governance through goals’ approach to earth system governance, which requires collaborative action through multi-stakeholder partnerships and tailored responses that address SDG interactions. This article focuses on goal-setting as a possible response to the SDGs. By bridging governance through goals and SDG interaction literature, we develop a two-dimensional framework to explore specificity (how precise are the goals?) and connectivity (how are SDGs, institutions, and actors connected?) in goals. From examining a sample of 414 goals belonging to 64 multi-stakeholder partnerships with the potential to address SDG13 on Climate Action, the article contributes to the special issue by providing a novel account of how multi-stakeholder partnerships translate and address combinations of SDGs differently. The article engages with academic and policy debates on the steering effects of governance through goals, by discussing the potential of lofty goals to facilitate an integrated, accelerated approach to SDG implementation.