7. The Untapped Functions of International Cooperation in the Age of Sustainable Development

Throughout the decades, development cooperation has mainly been based on a specific, normative notion of development itself (Kloke-Lesch 2019). These traditional discourses understand development mainly as a progressive (“positive”), primarily socio-economic process that needs to happen in the “developing countries” and had happened before in the “developed countries”. Also, critical development studies (Veltmeyer and Wise 2018), which argue in favour of alternative development paths, tend to stick to a normative and geographically limited (or at least focussed) notion of development.⁸ At the same time, calls to reconsider and abandon the term “development” are growing, as the term appears to produce more misunderstandings than solutions and to perpetuate the dichotomies of Self/Other or South/North (Schönberg 2019).

In order to break free of these basically normative connotations of “development” and get a better grip on the manifold processes under “accelerated globalisation”, the concept of transformation studies tries to contribute towards a rethinking of international development (Alff and Hornidge 2019). Here, transformation is conceived as an open-ended and unpredictable process (“any process of change, including studying it, or attempts to actively shape it”) with an emphasis on “the negotiation processes inherent to unfolding change, rather than about its ultimate result or outcome” not “being bound or fixed to particular places, regions or areas” (Alff and Hornidge 2019, p. 142), and thereby also challenging the traditional geographical limits of the notion of development. This challenge also sneaked into the renewed definition of development studies that evolved within the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes, which mentions as one of the emerging novel concerns “poverty and social exclusion in industrialised countries” while maintaining development studies as “also characterised by normative and policy concerns” (Mönks et al. 2019).⁹ Moving these argumentations even further, one could also turn to a more neutral understanding of the notion of “development” itself as a term covering the change (“developments”) occurring or unfolding in any place.

On the normative side, the advent of the universal concept of sustainable development—with its economic, social, environmental, as well as political dimensions—constitutes a contestation to both the purpose and the geographical focus of the traditional concept of development: the 2030 Agenda claims that development everywhere needs to be sustainable. Thus, sustainable development as a concept cannot be confined to “developing countries”, giving rise to doubts whether the notion of development can have any separate normative meaning at all alongside the notion of sustainable development. In the same vein, “the concept of the global common good as a normative and analytical framework for development research and policy and international cooperation for global sustainability” (Messner and Scholz 2018, p. 1) constitutes a fundamental change of perspective by moving the vanishing point of development and development cooperation beyond “developing countries” alone. These various contestations have contributed to an emerging shift “towards a new paradigm of global development” where the term “international development” and the accompanying concept of development cooperation from the “North” to the “South” became seen as “increasingly inappropriate for encompassing the various actors, processes and major challenges with which our world engages in the early 21st century” (Horner 2019). In this context, it is worth noting that the notion of global development is—and should always be—broader than a political product such as the 2030 Agenda with its SDGs, which by their very character are an expression of a political compromise struck in a given moment in history.¹⁰

Based on a primarily normative concept of development, most development cooperation actors from the “North” have a penchant for occupying the high moral ground and deliberately trying to insulate themselves from political, economic, or other interests and concerns beyond their own remit all too easily denounced as selfish, amoral, or at least short-term, and denied having normative bearings of their own. This basically altruistic self-perception renders development cooperation quite a delicate position with regard to other policy fields. Since giving in to self-interest is seen as an aberration from the path of virtue and questioning their core identity, development cooperation actors hesitate to enter in a give-and-take situation with other departments.

In addition, aid that is also oriented towards securing domestic or national interests is seen as a detrimental (“not always the most efficient, nor the most effective”) way to maximise global development ambitions (Gulrajani and Calleja 2019). This claim of maintaining the “integrity” or “purity” of development cooperation by the “North” as, for example, epitomised in the Principled Aid Index (Gulrajani and Calleja 2019), is an underestimated impediment when seeking political compromise. On the other hand, counting in self-interest and non-developmental normative concerns always has been—and continues to be—part of the political reality of development cooperation (Gulrajani and Calleja 2019; Mawdsley 2017). Denying this leads to the often observed hypocrisy in domestic and international development discourses, hampering the credibility more than the very fact itself.

Also, the suggestion to understand development cooperation quite broadly as “a country’s policies and how these affect the current and future welfare and growth of other countries’ people and economies” and to include actors “that do not have an explicit policy towards other countries […] because their policies – for example, on climate, migration, and trade—have a bearing on people elsewhere, regardless of their intent” (Mitchell 2021) can be seen as an acknowledgement of the realities of cooperation while maintaining a traditional normative orientation. The talk of win-win cooperation and enlightened self-interest tries to overcome this hypocrisy, but it does not change much the basic normative understanding of development cooperation.

It was after the end of the “East-West” conflict, in particular, that development cooperation actors hoped to break free of the geopolitical considerations infringing on their activities and focus on their core normative purpose, which inter alia led to the Millennium Declaration (UN 2000) and the MDGs. However, the two decades following the MDGs have shown something different and confronted a normatively overcharged notion of development cooperation with new contestations. Insulating development cooperation from infringements by other policy fields, while at the same time confronting them with far-reaching developmental demands, can lead to isolation and marginalisation of the policy field or, eventually, to its subordination to others.

Lastly and most importantly, a normative and geographically limited self-conceptualisation of development cooperation makes it difficult for development cooperation actors to deal with emerging new challenges and new actors. This could, for example, be observed after 1989, when Western donors started to support and promote transformation in Central and Eastern Europe and in the countries of the former Soviet Union by deploying institutions and instruments of development cooperation. This engagement of development cooperation actors was heavily contested, both from within and beyond the traditional development community, arguing that these countries were not “developing countries”, the purpose of the engagement was not poverty reduction, and including them in the official development assistance (ODA) would crowd out traditional recipients.¹¹

The primarily normative and geographically limited understanding of developing cooperation encapsulated in the ODA concept also holds sway over the discourses on the increased heterogeneity of “developing countries” (van Bergeijk and van Marrewijk 2013; Fialho and van Bergeijk 2017). There, it leads to calls to focus development cooperation on low-income countries, to graduate middle-income countries from the list of ODA recipients, and to “hand over” cooperation with them to departments beyond the aid agencies. A comparable debate runs about whether, or to what extent, support for global public goods such as climate or biodiversity (Kaul 2017), activities in the context of military interventions such as in Afghanistan or Iraq (Dalrymple 2016; Kisangani and Pickering 2015), or, more recently, measures in the context of migration (CSO Partnership 2017) should be considered part of development cooperation.

Furthermore, and not only in these topical contexts, foreign affairs as well as line ministries of DAC countries have created budget lines and set up operational structures to implement projects in “developing countries” and to fund respective multilateral institutions, thus bypassing aid departments and agencies, and furthering the “fragmentation of aid” (Klingebiel et al. 2016). To a significant extent, the emergence of these actors can be seen also as a reaction to the hesitation and refusal by traditional development actors to embrace new topics, for example in the areas mentioned above and the related concerns of other departments. Consequently, and although most of these activities are reported as ODA, aid departments are struggling to coordinate and embed them into their broader frameworks of development cooperation.

These contestations from within the individual DAC countries are accompanied and reinforced from beyond the DAC by the increasing relevance of other state actors and approaches often subsumed under “South-South” cooperation.¹² In its self-perception as well as in the UN, this type of cooperation is explicitly seen as distinct from ODA (UN 2019b) by following the idea of a mutually beneficial cooperation taking quite different, multimodal forms by linking financial and technical cooperation under concessionary terms with non-concessionary means, knowledge sharing, trade, and investment in all kinds of sectors.

The discussed concept of Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD) can be understood as an attempt to develop an overarching framework for all external, officially supported finance for sustainable development (UN 2019a). “Southern” actors see this as the “Southernisation” of ODA and an attempt to measure “South-South” cooperation with a concept originally coming from the OECD. Still, the vanishing point also of the TOSSD concept lies in a group of countries categorised as “developing”.

Given these changing conceptualisations and contestations of development cooperation, it seems useful to look for a more basic feature that is common to all the different manifestations: the function of development cooperation within the externally oriented policy fields (Kloke-Lesch 1998a, b). Such a basic feature needs to be embedded into a broader functional understanding of externally oriented governmental activities. For this, it seems helpful to develop a very basic mapping of the external functions of a state as a “political system”, that is, the functions that relate to its external environment and are performed in order to maintain the system (see Table 7.1). These potential functions could be basically described as threefold: first, shaping relations between countries, second, shaping conditions within (other) countries, and third, shaping global conditions.

Shaping relations between countries is the most basic and oldest external function of states, including, on the one hand, the relations between the states (as “political systems”) themselves (from mutual recognition and diplomacy through to the threat and use of military force), and on the other hand non-governmental relations between the countries, such as the interactions of economic and societal actors or individual persons (e.g. flow of people, goods, services, capital, knowledge, and information). Traditionally, this function is exerted by a state primarily with a view to domestic and national purposes, while in principle respecting the concepts of sovereignty and non-interference with regard to other states.

However, as the internal developments of other countries sometimes matter, shaping the conditions within countries emerged as a second external function of states. This function can be exerted with high, low, or no respect for the principles of sovereignty and non-interference as well as on the basis, for example, of a request/invitation from the one state or a proposition by the other. It may relate to economic or social conditions (e.g. labour standards, security or human rights issues, or environmental as well as migration concerns).

Beyond the conditions within countries, there is increasing interest by states in shaping global conditions. This third external function of states relates to global public goods as well as other concerns that require more than measures just within countries (e.g. climate; oceans, including deep sea mining; biodiversity; global macroeconomic stability and a functioning trading system; health; air traffic security; space; and migration).

When exercising these functions, governments can use and combine a broad array of means. I suggest categorising them as regulatory, promotional, and cooperative. Regulatory means include laws and norms at the national and international levels. Promotional means refer in the first place to financial and other incentives for non-governmental actors (e.g. business, civil society organisations, individual persons) engaged in external activities. Cooperative means, in this context, are specifically understood as intended intergovernmental project and programme cooperation aiming at concrete, palpable outcomes.

All three external functions of a state can be performed in unilateral, bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral ways. The motives can be selfish, altruistic, or enlightened. The objectives may lie at home or abroad. Furthermore, the functions can be intertwined. For example, countries can shape relations to other countries with the aim of changing conditions within these countries, or they can engage in shaping conditions within other countries while aiming at global conditions or pursuing domestic policy purposes.

When applying this understanding of external governmental activities, one can describe the basic function of development cooperation as shaping conditions within (other) countries by using cooperative and promotional civilian means (Kloke-Lesch 1998a, b). These instruments include, above all, (1) realising projects and programmes that are often accompanied by an active influence on the framework conditions in the respective countries and (2) promoting non-governmental activities in these countries. For this functional definition, it does not matter whether it is performed by a dedicated department (“aid agency”) or by governmental entities scattered across departments. Furthermore, development policy in a broader sense would also try to influence the regulatory activities, for example by foreign affairs or trade departments, with a view to its pursued objectives (“policy coherence for development”).

Thus, this functional role of development cooperation can come into play wherever, whenever, and for whatever reason it is politically desired and possible to influence conditions in specific countries using civilian means, from unilateral through to multilateral ones. Such a functional approach to development cooperation would not start with the question whether countries, or people in countries, are needy, but rather whether there is a necessity or interest felt to impact on developments in countries, irrespective of whether they are listed as “developing” or “developed” countries.

Depriving the notion of development cooperation of its traditional normative core and geographical focus is not meant to allow for policies not strongly rooted in the norms and values that are enshrined, for example, in international law and national constitutions (Burchi et al. 2018). On the contrary, a functional approach can be helpful in better analysing and understanding the realities and normative framings of international relations and cooperation under changing circumstances, in comparing the activities of different actors by using a uniform terminology, and in identifying necessary next steps when implementing a new, ambitious, and universal normative framework such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The 2030 Agenda marks a fundamental turn from the concept of “international development” organised around the “North-South” binary, poverty eradication, and aid for “developing countries” to a universal concept of “global development” with sustainable development at its normative core and requiring a broad range of MoIs in and between all countries: domestic as well as international, non-financial as well as financial, concessional as well as non-concessional, and political as well as technical ones (Kloke-Lesch 2016).

Do the 2030 Agenda and the steps to implement it actually live up to its proclaimed universal ambitions? On the conceptual and normative levels, the broadening of the substantial purpose of development into sustainable development is spelt out throughout the document and has, in principle, been accepted globally. With regard to the universality of the agenda and the geographic shift from “developing countries” to all countries, as well as to global issues and global public goods, the picture is more nuanced. On the one hand, the agenda calls on all countries for implementation (“These are universal goals and targets which involve the entire world, developed and developing countries alike” [UN 2015c]), and almost all of the SDGs—including their substantial targets—are framed in a universal way. On the other hand, the document maintains the distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries and gives particular prominence to implementation in the latter, while calling on the former to support these endeavours. This lopsidedness gets stronger with respect to the means of implementation, which rely mainly on the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (UN 2015b).

The AAAA is a product of the Financing for Development process, which predates the universal 2030 Agenda and has been limited to the implementation in “developing countries” (Kloke-Lesch 2016). The relation between the AAAA and the 2030 Agenda was a contested issue, in particular with regard to non-financial means of implementation, the role of the “common but differentiated responsibilities” principle beyond environmental issues, and to what extent the 2030 Agenda and the individual SDGs should contain specific means of implementation (Dodds et al. 2017). Eventually, the AAAA was declared an integral part of the 2030 Agenda and, in addition, means of implementation targets were included both under each SDG and SDG 17.

When applying the functional understanding of external governmental activities, the 62 MoIs mentioned in the 2030 Agenda¹³ (see Annex) can be understood as a regulatory framework geared towards the three fields of activities described (shaping relations between countries/shaping conditions within countries/shaping global conditions) by using the three basic kinds of means (regulatory, promotional, and cooperative instruments), leading to nine principle functional fields (plus the overarching MoI 17.14 on policy coherence for sustainable development). In Table 7.2, I assign each MoI to one of these fields according to its main focus. In addition, all MoIs are categorised according to their universality or focus on a type of country, leading to five categories: (1) exclusively oriented towards “developed countries”, (2) universally oriented with an additional focus on “developed countries”, (3) universally oriented, (4) universally oriented with an additional focus on “developing countries”, and (5) exclusively oriented towards “developing countries”. With all the reservations that these different kinds of rough categorisations and assignments entail, the analysis provides at least some general patterns that expose both the overall mindset that led to the MoIs of the 2030 Agenda and the blind spots or missing means of implementation.

With regard to fields of activities, the MoIs of the 2030 Agenda have a clear and strong focus on shaping conditions within countries. Two-thirds (40) focus on implementation within countries, whereas 14 address relations between countries, and only 7 relate to the shaping of global conditions. While a strong focus on domestic implementation is indispensable, the relatively lesser focus of the MoIs on global conditions is deplorable. Although this can be explained by the fact that the negotiations on the 2030 Agenda tried to avoid interfering with other processes, regimes, and institutions, such as the ones on climate or trade, it can also be seen as a missed opportunity for injecting a specific 2030 Agenda momentum into these areas and making them accountable to the 2030 Agenda processes. Regarding the types of instruments, the MoIs are quite evenly distributed between regulatory (19), promotional (23), and cooperative (19) instruments. The significantly strong showing of promotional instruments demonstrates the particular focus of the 2030 Agenda on the mobilisation of non-governmental actors, in particular from the business sector and civil society.

When checking the MoIs against the universal aspirations of the 2030 Agenda, three quite significant features emerge: (1) a first majority of the MoIs are framed in a universal way, addressing all countries, “developed” as well as “developing” countries alike; (2) a second, overlapping majority of the MoIs are exclusively, or with a special focus, geared towards “developing countries”; (3) not one of the MoIs is geared exclusively, or with a special focus, towards “developed countries”.¹⁴ More specifically: the first majority (34 out of 62) of the MoIs are framed in a universal way, including nine of them giving an additional reference to “developing countries”. When taking the latter together with the 28 MoIs that refer exclusively to implementation in “developing countries”, one arrives at a second majority (37 out of 62) of the MoIs geared at least partly towards the “developing countries”, including those that call for support by “developed countries”.

Furthermore, two other features are significant. First, all but one of the MoIs (18 out of 19) that address the regulation of governmental and non-governmental behaviour (including norm-setting) are framed in a strictly universal mode; most of them (14) are related to the domestic implementation in both “developed” and “developing” countries. Second, most of the MoIs that are geared towards the promotion of non-governmental behaviour (16 out of 23) and international cooperation (12 out of 19) have an exclusive focus on “developing countries”, addressing primarily the external relations of, and the conditions within, these countries.

This two-faced character of the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda—strongly universal on the one hand, and lopsided towards “developing countries” on the other hand when it comes to specifics—reveals that the Copernican turn in development thinking being ushered in by the 2030 Agenda is still incomplete with regard to implementation, institutions, and instruments. This incompleteness reflects the interests of, and power relations between, major groups of countries as well as institutional path-dependencies inherited from the pre-2015 world. As “developing countries” have become used to goals being set by the international community for their domestic development (such as the MDGs), this is in many ways quite a new experience for “developed countries”, in particular when operating within a common framework with “developing countries”. For “developing countries”, internationally agreed goals—including their commitments to implement them via domestic actions—have been acceptable as long as they are accompanied (quid pro quo) by commitments, although often vague, from “developed countries” to support this implementation through aid and other means. “Developed countries” have more or less accepted these commitments but remained hesitant about accepting means to monitor and enforce their implementation, even more so if they relate to issues where their own domestic and the international development goals conflict (King 2016). Thus, this hesitation by “developed countries” tends to increase even further with the 2030 Agenda, as now monitoring and implementation relate also to issues that are traditionally seen as being primarily domestic ones, without prima facie significant external relevance.

In addition, the pre-existence of the traditional development cooperation architecture with its institutions and instruments rendered it quite easy to draw on them when designing the MoIs of the 2030 Agenda. At the same time, this tended to be reinforced by the institutional interests of actors within this architecture on both the “donor” and “recipient” sides. At the same time, a more detailed inclusion of means of implementation beyond the development cooperation architecture—for example in areas such as international human rights covenants, trade agreements, international finance, or even environmental conventions—was met with some hesitation from many sides, not least by institutional actors in these areas that wanted to avoid “subordination” to a framework not of their own making. Thus, it is quite plausible that the negotiations on the 2030 Agenda (Dodds et al. 2017) settled with a prevalence of MoIs related to “developing countries” and development cooperation but only included a few weaker hints to other institutional arenas.

However, although the MoIs do not make specific references to implementation in “developed countries”, these are not released from their respective responsibilities. The letter and the spirit of the majority of the MoIs are truly universal and establish a responsibility, in the sense of “obligation” (Bexell and Jönsson 2017), also of “developed countries” to act on the SDGs domestically and in their relations with each other. Furthermore, the agenda itself calls on all countries to put “cohesive nationally owned sustainable development strategies” at the heart of the efforts and underscores “that, for all countries, public policies and the mobilization and effective use of domestic resources, […] are central” (UN 2015c).

This is all the more compelling with regard to the “developed countries”. Their gross domestic product (GDP) amounts to roughly three-fifths of global GDP, and their trade and foreign direct investment just between them amount to roughly half of both. But it is not only these figures that matter due to their sheer size in addition to the spillover effects on other countries and the planet that go along with them (Schmidt-Traub et al. 2019). Also, the patterns of production and consumption, of trade and foreign direct investment, and, for example, of knowledge production and technological development that prevail within and between “developed countries” critically shape the global system and their interactions with other countries.

Furthermore, and most importantly, without being embraced also by the people of “developed countries” as a positive agenda that is beneficial to themselves as well, the 2030 Agenda will not get the required societal and political support. It is therefore of critical importance to link core societal concerns in “developed countries” to the SDGs and integrate them as guiding objectives in the respective domestic policies.

It was the UN performing its universal regulatory, primarily norm-setting function in shaping relations between countries, conditions within countries, as well as global conditions that led to the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. Many of the MoIs of the agenda are an expression of this function. However, the UN has few means at its disposal to enforce the norms set by the agenda. The only major institutional innovation to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).¹⁵ This intergovernmental body is to play a central role in the universal follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda, including “voluntary national reviews” undertaken by both “developed” and “developing” countries and involving multiple stakeholders.¹⁶

However, there are concerns related to the quality of the reports and the underlying review processes (International Institute for Sustainable Development 2019; Kindornay 2019). Furthermore, the consequences of the reporting are unclear, raising the question of the reviews’ relevance (Beisheim 2018). Another major limitation to the effectiveness of the HLPF is the fact that the organisations of the UN system, including the Bretton Woods institutions, and other organisations such as the World Trade Organisation are not accountable to the HLPF. They are just invited “to contribute within their respective mandates to the discussions of the forum” (UN 2013, p. 6). Thus, the HLPF as a truly universal body is admittedly a major achievement in itself, but it still lacks the means to live up to its mandate.

The universality of the SDGs and of the HLPF is also a challenge to the other parts of the UN system, with many struggling to overcome their path-dependencies inherited from the pre-2015 world. What used to be the United Nations Development System geared towards “developing countries” needed to turn itself into a United Nations Sustainable Development System, which carries not only many of the terminological but also political and practical questions (Burley and Lindores 2016), in particular to what extent activities geared to domestic implementation in “developed countries” should be included.

In the meantime, first steps could be observed. The United Nations Development Group was turned into the United Nations Sustainable Development Group. The UN’s statistical work on the SDGs covers all countries, as do, in principle, major reports on the SDGs, such as the “Global Sustainable Development Report” (UN 2019d). The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), which traditionally has been the home base of “developing countries” in the UN (Janus and Weinlich 2018), is now taking first steps towards becoming the hub and home for the universal SDGs.

In this context, it is worthwhile to note, for example, that the “Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2019” (UN 2019a) was issued for the first time under this title (it was formerly known as the “Financing for Development Report”), paying tribute to the universality of the 2030 Agenda. The report also covers, at least to a certain extent, domestic issues “developed countries” are faced with when implementing the 2030 Agenda, such as rising inequalities and the gender pay gap, investment-to-GDP ratio, as well as public and private debt levels through to sustainable investment and just transitions. With regard to regulatory means, the report also covers, for example, the European Commission’s legislative proposals that aim to establish a unified European classification system of sustainable economic activities (“taxonomy”) and sees—with regard to integrated national financing frameworks for sustainable development—“clearly scope to do so in both developed and developing countries” (UN 2019a, p. 11). These first steps towards universality come as a pleasant difference to the OECD’s “Global Outlook on Financing for Sustainable Development 2019” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD] 2019c), which reduces its very topic to financing sustainable development in the “developing countries”.

However, there is still some way to go from embracing the universality of the SDGs in the UN’s conceptual, regulatory/norm-setting, and analytical work to doing so in its operational activities, which remain largely confined to shaping conditions within “developing countries”. This requires further reforms, for example of UN DESA (Janus and Weinlich 2018), and may even need changes in mandates, for example of the UN’s funds and programmes.

This feature becomes even clearer with the Bretton Woods institutions. Both the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have a tendency of reductively speaking about the “2030 Development Agenda” instead of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and maintaining that they serve the SDGs by delivering on their core mandates, which actually predate the 2030 Agenda (International Monetary Fund [IMF] 2019a; World Bank Group 2016). Although the WBG claims to “continue to work in distinct, complementary ways across the full range of low, middle, and high-income member countries […] allowing transfer of knowledge, experience, and resources across its entire membership”, the role of the latter is only seen as to “provide the financial strength of the WBG institutions” (World Bank Group 2016, p. 3). Also, the IMF, whose mandate is—compared to the World Bank Group—truly universal, directs its support for the SDGs “primarily” towards “developing countries” (IMF 2019a, p. 2). With regard to climate change and the IMF, the picture looks a little bit different, as the IMF highlights its “unique role among UN agencies: given its focus on macro and fiscal policies, universal membership and regular interactions with finance ministries” and that it “has a role in providing analysis of (and guidance on) energy pricing and macro-fiscal policies consistent with countries’ climate strategies submitted for the Paris Agreement” (IMF 2019b, p. 41). So far, this view has not been transferred to the 2030 Agenda. Thus, the potentially transformative power of the regulatory, promotional, and cooperative instruments of both institutions remains largely untapped with regard to high-income countries.

As the two major international or, respectively, supranational organisations, the OECD and the European Union (EU), which are comprised in the first place of high-income countries, are of critical importance for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in and between “developed countries”. Both committed themselves quite early to contribute towards achieving the SDGs, but they are still struggling to translate this commitment into their core operational activities beyond the realm of development cooperation.

As early as 2016, the OECD adopted an OECD Action Plan on the Sustainable Development Goals calling to “apply an SDG lens to the OECD’s strategies and policy tools” (OECD 2016), followed by the adaption of the DAC mandate to the 2030 Agenda (DAC 2017). However, despite the many activities—in particular on measuring distance to the SDG targets in OECD member countries themselves (OECD 2019b) and on “policy coherence for sustainable development” (OECD 2019d)—the SDGs have not even been mentioned once in 30 of the 35 OECD Economic Surveys of member economies issued since 2016.¹⁷ These OECD flagship products actually reflect the views and policies of both the OECD and the respective countries. Only the surveys on Slovenia (2017), The Netherlands (2018), and Poland (2018) included references to the 2030 Agenda or the SDGs in an at least somewhat systematic way.¹⁸ The broad neglect of the 2030 Agenda by the Economic Surveys is particularly remarkable since these surveys cover quite a range of issues that are highly relevant for achieving the SDGs within the OECD countries.

A similar pattern could be observed with the EU. On the one hand, the EU championed the SDGs during the negotiation period and was quite quick in translating the 2030 Agenda into the new European Consensus on Development framing the agenda’s “implementation […] in partnership with all developing countries” (European Union [EU] 2017, p. 4). On the other hand, four years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the EU was still reflecting whether the agenda should have a significant bearing at all on domestic European policies (European Commission 2019a; Kloke-Lesch 2018), for example through the EU’s budget and regulatory work, which could significantly contribute to shaping conditions within member countries. Evidence shows that half of the member states have some sort of national sustainable development strategy that is actually operational (Niestroy et al. 2019), but that implementation at this level is not supported by community-level activities “to mainstream the SDGs in all policies, in particular through the better regulation tools, and other instruments such as structural funds” (Niestroy et al. 2019, p. 6). It was only recently that the elected president of the next European Commission committed to refocus the European Semester—a framework for the coordination of economic policies across the EU—into an instrument that integrates the SDGs (von der Leyen 2019).

The Group of Seven (G7) and the Group of Twenty (G20), as global governance clubs made up by the major industrialised and emerging economies, could be places to address the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, both within and between these countries. Instead, the summit history since 2015 has shown a different picture.¹⁹ The G7 have never endeavoured to systematically embrace the agenda as something of relevance for their domestic policies or their relations with each other. Already in 2015, and only a couple of months before the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, the G7 Summit in Elmau, Germany, positioned the agenda primarily in the traditional development cooperation context. The Ise-Shima/Japan Summit (2016) went one step further by committing “to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, domestically and internationally” but failed to specify this beyond health as well as women’s empowerment and gender equality. Thereafter, the G7 summits in 2017 (Taormina, Italy) and 2018 (Charlevoix, Canada) referred to the agenda only marginally and in relation to “developing countries”. One could see this reluctance by the G7 as the result of a silent division of labour between G7 and G20 processes, but the developments in the G20 reveal similar patterns.

In distinction from the G7, the G20 brings together major “developed” and “developing” countries that could—and initially did—render it easier to embrace the 2030 Agenda as being relevant to the domestic policies of its members. Immediately after the SDG summit, the 2015 G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, committed to “develop an action plan in 2016 to further align our work with the 2030 Agenda”. The G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by the 2016 G20 Summit (Hangzhou, China) and updated in all of the following summits (2017 Hamburg, Germany; 2018 Buenos Aires, Argentina; and 2019 Osaka, Japan). The Action Plan and its updates, including the joint OECD/UNDP report on the “G20 Contribution to the 2030 Agenda” (OECD and United Nations Development Programme 2019), are proof of the great potential the G20 holds in contributing to the implementation of the agenda—also within and between its members—through regulatory work, including norm-setting, and by initiating or promoting cooperation. However, this potential is left largely untapped. The G20’s support for the agenda appears to be fading (Bauer et al. 2019). Updates are limited to collective actions, depend on voluntary inputs from responsible work streams, and resemble an inventory rather than a means of driving change. Actions reported are mainly linked to the provision of global public goods and support to “developing countries”. Since the presentations on national actions by the G20 members in Annex B to the 2016 Action Plan have not been continued, the only G20 instrument to promote domestic implementation remains the Voluntary Peer Learning Mechanism and the documentation of its results in the updates. From a structural point of view, it is important to note that G20 leaders mandated the Development Working Group “to act as a coordinating body and policy resource for sustainable development across the G20” (G20 Action Plan) but failed to adapt its composition (and name) in line with the upgraded mandate. Composed in the first place of representatives from development cooperation departments (on the donors’ as well as on the recipients’ side), and without participation from departments that are responsible for the domestic implementation of the agenda in the G20 countries, the Development Working Group is in a very difficult position to impact both other G20 work streams and domestic implementation. Thus, the underlying common problem with the G20 and the G7 is a widespread and increasing defensiveness of their members and/or leaders to make domestic implementation of the agenda a common cause between them.

There is little evidence whether, or to what extent, “developed countries” will introduce the 2030 Agenda as a formative feature into the bilateral relations between them. As a case in point, the EU and its member states—as a self-declared “global trail blazer in sustainable development” (European Commission 2019a, p. 31)—committed to advancing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda “globally through the full range of their external actions” (European Commission 2019b, p. 7) but focus, for example, their Joint Synthesis Report “Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals Across the World” (European Commission 2019b) exclusively on “developing countries”. It is surprising that this report does not refer to the recent EU-Canada and EU-Japan partnership agreements. Both the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada and the Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan have dedicated chapters on sustainable development. Both make explicit reference to the 2030 Agenda or the SDGs and the implementation within the respective countries; establish regulatory, promotional, as well as cooperative instruments with regard to trade and investment; and set up institutional structures and processes (e.g. Committees on Trade and Sustainable Development) to oversee their implementation.²⁰ The 2019 EU-Canada Summit committed, for example, to reinforce research and innovation cooperation to tackle societal challenges and promote sustainable development. For comparison: also the new Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement resolves to “further the aims of sustainable development” (preamble) and emphasises “the importance of green growth […] in achieving a competitive and sustainable North American economy” (Agreement on Environmental Cooperation), but it does not refer to the 2030 Agenda.²¹ It is much too early to say whether the provisions in these different agreements will turn into something transformative compared to a low-ambition or mere do-no-harm approach.

The same applies to the new Treaty of Aachen between France and Germany, which also contains specific provisions on the 2030 Agenda, including the creation of a joint platform to deal with transformation processes in both societies.²² Another example for introducing the SDGs into a cooperation format between “developed countries” can be found within the Arctic Council, where “a closer and more visible tie-in between the Arctic Council’s work and the SDGs” was discussed although only with the conclusion “that the Arctic Council could offer valuable guidance in the pursuit of the SDGs in the Arctic, while their implementation is a national responsibility” (Arctic Council 2018, pp. 9–10). Even if some of these small steps indicate a possible direction for the future, they cannot hide the fact that, so far, the 2030 Agenda has not made its way into mainstream relations and cooperation between “developed countries”. This, however, needs to change if countries want to live up to the ambition of the agenda and address the emerging geo-economics and geopolitics of sustainable development, as already becoming evident, for example, in the Arctic or with the ongoing energy transition (International Renewable Energy Agency 2019).

Mapping the MoIs of the 2030 Agenda from a functional perspective laid bare a gap between the universal ambitions of the agenda and its lopsided MoIs, which could also be observed during the first steps of implementing the agenda, in particular within and between “developed countries”. As the implementation of the agenda within and between these countries is of outmost importance to its overall success, the function of development cooperation (“shaping conditions within (other) countries by using cooperative and promotional instruments”) should be exerted also vis-à-vis “developed countries” wherever necessary, accompanied by regulatory instruments designed accordingly (“policy coherence for sustainable development”). For this to happen, the pre-2015 development cooperation model needs to transition into a model of mutually transformative cooperation for the 2030 world.

So far, development cooperation actors have answered to the 2030 Agenda mainly by adopting its terminology and using it as a reinforced narrative underpinning and incrementally broadening their pre-existing business models. The new DAC mandate, for example, speaks of supporting “developing countries” in their implementation of the 2030 Agenda and promoting the importance of global public goods and policy coherence for sustainable development in this regard (DAC 2017). The mandate commits to modernising ODA and improving the development cooperation architecture, but it does not question their basic features inherited from the pre-2015 world with respect to the universality of the 2030 Agenda.

The same phenomenon can be observed with “South-South” cooperation. The Buenos Aires Outcome Document of the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation (BAPA+40) reaffirmed the basic features and principles of “South-South” cooperation such as mutual benefit, also predating the 2030 Agenda, and put them into relation with the implementation of the 2030 Agenda while also acknowledging “the need to enhance the development effectiveness of South-South and triangular cooperation” (UN 2019b, p. 3). The repeated and supportive reference to triangular cooperation²³ fails to be truly innovative by sticking to an approach aligned to the “requesting developing country” (UN 2019b, p. 8). Thus, the mutuality of cooperation remains confined to the “South-South” dimension, and the role of the “North” remains unidirectional.

Although these conceptual role-assignments are political and ideological constructs that are highly contested by the realities of both “North-South” and “South-South” cooperation (Bergamaschi et al. 2017; Mawdsley 2017), they still frame much of the debate and institutional framings. Figure 7.1 illustrates the main features of the pre-2015 model with, on the one hand, the unidirectional “North-South” development cooperation basically organised around the idea of aid and, on the other hand, the “South-South” cooperation with mutually beneficial cooperation at its purported conceptual core.

However, under the new paradigm of global development (Horner 2019) being ushered in by the 2030 Agenda, also the concept of development cooperation needs to become global, both in political practice and in scholarly debates. As “the 2030 Agenda constitutes a new basis for international cooperation between all countries”, it is evident that “all forms and forums of international cooperation must contribute to implement the 2030 Agenda” (Scholz et al. 2017). The agenda’s concept of a Global Partnership for Sustainable Development brings about two significant openings in this regard, firstly by its universality in calling on all countries to implement it, and secondly by highlighting non-governmental actors, including particularly the private sector, and all types of resources in a way not seen before in a comparable document. The former requires “developed countries” to also transform their relations and cooperation with each other, while the latter both mirrors a recent trend in the “North-South” cooperation reflected in the beyond-aid debate (Janus et al. 2015) and allows for fully including “South-South” cooperation with its distinctive features of linking aid, trade, and investment in a mutually beneficial way.

Well thought through, this already entails three core ingredients of a cooperation model for the 2030 world: universality, multimodality, and mutuality. Universality requires incorporating “North-North” cooperation alongside “North-South” and “South-South” cooperation. Multimodality implies that cooperation modes previously confined to relations between specific groups of countries can be applied between all types of countries. Mutuality in a universal cooperation model extends beyond “South-South” and “North-North” cooperation and needs to be introduced well into “North-South” (or “South-North”) cooperation. Furthermore, and most importantly, in a 2030 Agenda context, a universal, multimodal, and mutual cooperation needs to be transformational, leading to “transformationality” as a fourth ingredient.

Figure 7.2 illustrates key features of a cooperation model for the 2030 world linking all types of countries (exemplified as high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries) in basically the same ways with each other as well as with the international and supranational cooperation organisations, with mutually transformative cooperation at its core. This relates, on the one hand, to transforming existing cooperation between all types of countries and, on the other hand, introducing new transformative cooperation. Wherever necessary, states as well as international and supranational institutions should use not only regulatory but also promotional and cooperative instruments to shape conditions within—and relations between—countries of all income levels in ways conducive to achieving the SDGs.

Development cooperation actors (bi- and multilateral ones alike) from both the “North” and the “South” need to answer whether they want to be part of this new 2030 world of international cooperation by turning themselves into a universal means for delivering transformative change across countries at all levels of income or by just sticking to their normative, geographical, and institutional patterns inherited from the pre-2015 world. International cooperation actors from other governmental departments (both in the “North” and the “South”) as well as international and supranational organisations need to decide whether to also introduce the transformative momentum of the 2030 Agenda into their cooperation with (other) “developed countries” or to confine this to their cooperation with (other) “developing countries”. Both groups of actors have to face the challenge that, in a world of common and collective problems (Haddad 2013), it is increasingly inadequate and inappropriate to stick to a cooperation architecture that separates countries and actors instead of bringing them together as equals working and (re)searching for the global common good. Development cooperation actors as well as other actors should embrace this opportunity. The function of international cooperation in the 2030 world is to jointly deliver change, not aid.