Type II partnerships were developed at the
Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Arising in opposition to the
state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State
* ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States
* ''Our S ...
-centred
eco-governmentality of previous approaches to
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
policy, the partnerships facilitate the inclusion of private and civil
actors
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), lite ...
into the management of sustainable development. The partnerships are employed alongside traditional
intergovernmental mechanisms in order to effectively implement the United Nations'
Agenda 21
Agenda 21 is a non-binding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. It is an action age ...
and
Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millenniu ...
, particularly at sub-national level. Although widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and effective developments in global
environmental governance
Environmental governance (EG) consist of a system of laws, norms, rules, policies and practices that dictate how the board members of an environment related regulatory body should manage and oversee the affairs of any environment related regu ...
in recent years, the partnerships have faced criticism due to fears of a lack of
accountability
Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the publ ...
, and the risk that they may exacerbate inequalities of power between Northern and Southern states. Despite these reservations, there is a general consensus among state and non-governmental actors that Type II partnerships are a significantly progressive step in global environmental governance in general, and sustainable development
discourse
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
in particular.
Background and development
First proposed at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, Type II partnerships are characterised by collaborations between national or sub-national governments, private sector actors and civil society actors, who form
voluntary
Voluntary may refer to:
* Voluntary (music)
* Voluntary or volunteer, person participating via volunteering/volunteerism
* Voluntary muscle contraction
See also
* Voluntary action
* Voluntariness, in law and philosophy
* Voluntaryism
Volunt ...
transnational agreements in order to meet specific
Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future".United Nations (2017) R ...
. The Johannesburg negotiations also produced so-called Type I outcomes referred to under the umbrella of a Global Deal, a series of legally binding intergovernmental commitments designed to aid states in the implementation of sustainable development goals.
However, during the discussions preceding the summit, a growing consensus emerged among the actors involved that traditional intergovernmental relations were no longer sufficient in the management of sustainable development, and consequently the talks began to incorporate suggestions for increasingly
decentralised
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group.
Conce ...
and
participatory
Citizen Participation or Public Participation in social science refers to different mechanisms for the public to express opinions—and ideally exert influence—regarding political, economic, management or other social decisions. Participato ...
approaches. Considered to be one of the most innovative and celebrated outcomes of the 2002 summit, the partnerships were created as a means by which to further implement the sustainable development goals set out in the Agenda 21 action plan, particularly those objectives aimed at the local and regional level, as traditional Type I intergovernmental strategies were deemed unlikely to effectively achieve lower level implementation of the Agenda 21 plan.
The Johannesburg negotiations concluded that Type II partnerships must meet seven key criteria: i) they should be voluntary and based on shared responsibility, ii) they must complement, rather than substitute, intergovernmental sustainable development strategies, and must meet the agreed outcomes of the Johannesburg summit, iii) they must consist of a range of multi-level
stakeholders, preferably within a given area of work, iv) they must ensure
transparency and accountability, v) they must produce tangible results, vi) the partnership must be new, and adequate funding must be available, and vii) a follow-up process must be developed. If these requirements were successfully fulfilled, it was hoped that Type II partnerships could create a fundamental shift in sustainable development discourse, leading to an increasingly participatory, bottom-up method of governing the issue.
Implementation and management
Following the Johannesburg summit, the
United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992.
Earth S ...
was granted responsibility for the management of Type II partnerships as its
mandate
Mandate most often refers to:
* League of Nations mandates, quasi-colonial territories established under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 28 June 1919
* Mandate (politics), the power granted by an electorate
Mandate may also ...
and focus were considered most appropriate to the supervision of the partnerships. The UNCSD was created following the
1992 Rio summit with the sole mandate of overseeing the implementation of Agenda 21 and the
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, often shortened to Rio Declaration, was a short document produced at the 1992 United Nations "Conference on Environment and Development" (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit. The Rio Decl ...
, a focus which made the UNCSD highly amenable to the management of Type II agreements. The UNCSD supervises the 300+ Type II partnerships formed as a result of the summit, ensuring that the partnerships continue to implement the sustainable development goals agreed at Johannesburg.
An example of one of the larger partnerships supervised by the UNCSD is the
Global Water Partnership
The Global Water Partnership (GWP) is an international network created to foster an integrated approach to water resources management (IWRM) and provide practical advice for sustainably managing water resources.Falkenmark, Malin and Folke, Carl ...
, a network of over 2,300 global partners composed of organisations including UN agencies, governments of developed and developing countries, development banks, research institutions,
NGOs
A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from government. They are typically nonprofit entities, and many of them are active in h ...
and private actors. The organisation aims to diffuse information regarding water management to stakeholders at all levels, and assists countries in the development of water management strategies at the local, national and global level, increasing the capacity of developing nations to manage water supplies in the long term.
Role in environmental governance
Transition from government to governance
''“This Summit will be remembered not for the treaties, commitments, or eloquent declarations it produced, but for the first stirrings of a new way of governing the global commons, the beginnings of a shift from the stiff formal waltz of traditional diplomacy to the jazzier dance of improvisational solution oriented partnerships that may include non-government organizations, willing governments and other stakeholders.”'' World Resources Institute, 2002[.]
The dominance of Type II partnerships as a primary outcome of the Johannesburg summit represented a fundamental shift in the governing of sustainable development; a transition from the top-down, government-centred method favoured by the
Brundtland Report
__NOTOC__
''Our Common Future'', also known as the Brundtland Report, was published on October 1987 by the United Nations through the Oxford University Press. This publication was in recognition of Gro Harlem Brundtland's, former Norwegian Prime M ...
and at the 1992 Rio summit, to a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach which acknowledged the importance of the economic and social expertise of non-governmental actors in sustainable development initiatives. Immediately prior to the summit, then- UN Secretary General
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan (; 8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder ...
predicted that whilst
governments
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
would be responsible for the creation of a common plan of action for sustainable development, the most significant and powerful agents of change to emerge from the Johannesburg negotiations would be Type II partnerships, through which the UN hoped to harness the technological, financial and scientific resources of partners involved in the agreements, reinvigorating the organisation's pursuit of sustainable development.
The UN guidelines for Type II partnerships specified that the agreements should be complementary to, not an alternative to, intergovernmental action plans for sustainable development. As opposed to developing the partnerships as a method of 'governing without government', the agreements were designed to govern alongside traditional government approaches. Rather than treating Type II partnerships as a
panacea
In Greek mythology, Panacea (Greek ''Πανάκεια'', Panakeia), a goddess of universal remedy, was the daughter of Asclepius and Epione. Panacea and her four sisters each performed a facet of Apollo's art:
* Panacea (the goddess of universal ...
for sustainable development, it was hoped that such participatory multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms would increase the flexibility and enhance the implementation of sustainable development policy in collaboration with states and international organisations. After the Johannesburg summit, the concept of environmental governance was no longer understood as a legalistic function performed solely by governments, but rather as a collaborative, informal approach to the management of environmental issues, involving both state and non-governmental actors. This new understanding demonstrates that the changing approach to sustainable development which arose from the Johannesburg summit influenced a much wider shift in global environmental governance.
Competing rationalities of government
Within a
Foucauldian
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
context, the Type I and Type II arguments presented in the summit negotiations represent two fundamentally opposing
rationalities of government. The
interventionist, state-centric approach to sustainable development favoured by advocates of the Global Deal represents a rationality of government which Foucault identified as
bio-politics; the application of political power in an attempt to control or modify life processes. Such an approach to the pursuit of sustainable development offers little opportunity for participation by private or civil actors, in direct contrast to the multi-stakeholder premise of Type II partnerships. The eco-governmental, disciplinary ideas conveyed in the Global Deal suggest that the Type I approach typifies the centralised
command-and-control method favoured by traditional government, whereas the decentralised, voluntary nature of Type II partnerships demonstrates an advanced liberal governmentality which empowers non-state actors to undertake responsibility for the governing of sustainable development, an approach which is representative of the participatory, multi-stakeholder methods by which governance is characterised.
The eventual dominance of Type II partnerships in the outcomes of the Johannesburg summit therefore symbolises a wider shift in the understanding of the purposes, ends and means of government in relation to sustainable development and environmental governance.
However, Mert
questions the compatibility of partnerships with the global governance of sustainable development. The partnerships represented a point of intersection between three previously separate political discourses;
participatory democracy
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected rep ...
,
private governance
Corporate governance is defined, described or delineated in diverse ways, depending on the writer's purpose. Writers focused on a disciplinary interest or context (such as accounting, finance, law, or management) often adopt narrow definitions ...
, and sustainable development, altering the dynamics of global environmental governance processes. The shift towards voluntary
mechanisms as opposed to international regulation could prove problematic as legally binding
frameworks
A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of.
Framework may refer to:
Computing
* Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...
are sometimes the most appropriate solution to the governance of environmental problems. A
hegemonic
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
approach to sustainable development discourse could demonstrate greater effectiveness in the management of the issue than a fragmented, partnership-driven approach which could lead to inconsistent and conflicting management of such a global issue.
Transnational governance networks
Type II partnerships exemplify a growing reliance on public-private-civil co-operation in environmental governance. The architects of the summit placed an emphasis on discussions which would encourage the creation of multi-stakeholder partnerships with the objective of fulfilling UN sustainable development goals, acknowledging that traditional intergovernmental agreements were inadequate to sufficiently promote sustainable development.
Furthermore, state actors were notoriously unwilling to improve international environmental co-operation prior to the Johannesburg summit, leaving those who sought a positive outcome to the WSSD to search for alternative solutions which incorporated a broader variety of actors.
Type II partnerships emerged as the dominant outcome of the Johannesburg summit, highlighting their importance as agents of change in the achievement of sustainable development. The partnerships were considered by advocates to be representative of a new era of environmental governance, characterised by collaborative decision-making and shared responsibility between public, private and civil actors in the management of transnational public issues.
The development of Type II partnerships marked the emergence of a broader phenomenon within environmental governance- the introduction of
transnational governance networks in the management of global environmental issues. Transnational governance networks combine actors from the public, private and civil sectors in the pursuit of common practices and ideas.
The role of networks of private and civil actors in transboundary communication is not novel to the academic community; however, the emphasis on transnational public-private-civil networks as mechanisms for achieving sustainable development during the Johannesburg negotiations led to recognition of the ability of such networks to integrate private and civil actors into the global environmental governance process.
Transnational governance networks address a number of shortcomings in traditional state-centred approaches to the management of transboundary issues such as sustainable development. They can diffuse information to the public perhaps more effectively than governments or international organisations, particularly when such information requires a degree of technical expertise to deliver, such as the transfer of specialised knowledge from the private sector to industry groups regarding sustainable business practices. They can also facilitate the implementation of global management strategies at the local level, and they may potentially close the participation gap in global environmental governance by involving private and civil actors in decision-making processes.
Reframing of sustainable development discourse
The Johannesburg summit represented a further shift in the governing of sustainable development; rather than considering environmental issues in isolation, as had previously been common practice within sustainable development policy, the Johannesburg negotiations concluded that a reframing of sustainable development discourse, which re-conceptualised sustainable development as a dynamic interaction between three interdependent pillars- society, environment and economy- was necessary in order to pursue a more
holistic
Holism () is the idea that various systems (e.g. physical, biological, social) should be viewed as wholes, not merely as a collection of parts. The term "holism" was coined by Jan Smuts in his 1926 book ''Holism and Evolution''."holism, n." OED Onl ...
ideal of sustainable development. This reframing of sustainable development required Type II partnerships to address a broader concept of sustainable development, and consequently objectives such as poverty alleviation and community involvement feature alongside environmental issues in the objectives of the partnerships.
Issues
Imbalances of power
Although designed to incorporate a broader range of social, environmental and economic perspectives into the environmental governance process and to facilitate the inclusion of actors from all levels into decision-making, the extent to which imbalances of power between actors involved in the partnerships affects their implementation has provoked concern among their critics.
Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff theorised that an effective partnership must fulfil two essential criteria: mutuality- interdependence and equality between partners, and organisational identity- the equal maintenance of each partner’s missions and goals. In the event of a partnership between Northern and Southern actors, for example, the North will inevitably contribute greater financial and material resources to the partnership than the South, creating a power inequality which may enable the North to assume control of the partnership and impairing the mutuality necessary for the partnership to function successfully.
This concern was reflected by a number of developing nations who formed a coalition to lobby against the development of Type II partnerships, fearing that the partnerships would award too much authority over sustainable development to the global North, whilst simultaneously reducing the responsibility of industrialised nations to develop and implement legally binding intergovernmental management strategies.
In order to maintain mutuality, it is therefore essential that the definition of a contribution within Type II partnerships is extended beyond financial and material resources, and includes knowledge, skills and other relevant strengths which can be incorporated to redress the balance of power within the partnership.
Accountability
Critics of Type II partnerships have expressed concern that the initiative is simply a means by which to deflect accountability for sustainable development management from states and international organisations. The United States, a nation infamously opposed to state-led environmental governance as evidenced by their withdrawal from the
Kyoto protocol
The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...
, strongly supported the development of Type II partnerships whilst continuing to oppose Type I outcomes, leading to concern that some nations may view Type II partnerships as an opportunity to deflect attention from a lack of state-level progress in the management of sustainable development. An emphasis on Type II partnerships, it is argued, could therefore be exploited by nations who wish to avoid accountability for the management of sustainable development and environmental issues, transferring responsibility for such issues to private actors who are less accountable to the needs of those affected by the problem in question.
The ensuring of accountability and transparency is a key criterion of Type II partnerships; however, the diverse multi-stakeholder composition of the partnerships negates the use of traditional accountability methods, such as the introduction of a centralised authority charged with maintaining the accountability of the partners involved in Type II agreements. Bäckstrand
suggests that a
pluralistic system of accountability, incorporating market and reputational accountability measures such as financial sanctions and
naming and shaming, could improve the accountability of the actors involved in Type II partnerships by providing more flexible methods of ensuring accountability which can be adapted to the nature of the actor in question.
Discussion
The Type II partnerships developed at the Johannesburg summit demonstrated a paradigm-shifting impact upon sustainable development discourse and the conceptualisation of global environmental governance. By addressing the limitations of the state-centric, top-down method which typified environmental governance prior to Johannesburg and facilitating the participation of private and civil actors in the governing of sustainable development, the partnerships became emblematic of the transition from command-and-control government to the informal, participatory governance mechanisms by which global environmental governance is now classified. Furthermore, the partnerships exemplify the use of transnational governance networks as a mechanism by which to implement environmental policy at local and regional level. Such factors led the World Resources Institute
to declare the partnerships representative of a ‘new era’ of environmental governance.
However, considering the flaws inherent in the partnerships, it is crucial that advocates of the agreements resist the temptation to consider them a magic bullet with which every shortcoming of a centralised approach to environmental governance can be addressed. Although advantageous in terms of increased flexibility and effective lower-level implementation of policies, partnerships lack the internal and external accountability of intergovernmental strategies, and may intensify power inequalities between the industrialised North and developing South. The decision of the UN to introduce Type II partnerships as complementary governance mechanism is therefore the most appropriate application of the partnerships, as the dynamic interaction between intergovernmental strategies and voluntary public-private-civil partnerships can potentially produce a far greater positive impact upon global environmental governance than the sum of its parts.
References
{{Reflist, 2
External links
United Nations Johannesburg Summit website a comprehensive resource regarding the summit and its outcomes.
UNCSD Type II Partnerships database and information which details the requirements of Type II Partnerships and lists the partnerships currently registered under the UNCSD.
2002 in South Africa
International sustainable development
United Nations conferences
Diplomatic conferences in South Africa
2002 in international relations