Sustainability challenges in international development are complex, multilevel and transboundary in nature. Tackling them effectively requires the involvement and cooperation of a series of stakeholders – including government bodies, international organisations, private companies, civil society organisations, academia and local communities.

The scope of this challenge is condensed in Sustainable Development Goal 17, “Partnerships for the Goals”, which calls for strengthening the means of implementation and revitalising the global partnership for sustainable development. And yet, to fully understand what cross-sector partnerships are or could be, it is necessary in the first instance to reflect critically on the mechanisms and dynamics, both overt or implicit, of their functioning, as well as the role that power imbalances have in shaping the partnerships, the unspoken assumptions of the cultural, political and institutional framework in which they occur – and the consequences of this all.

Before analysing specific means and methods of sustainable practices in solving social and environmental problems, this roundtable wants to focus on how sustainability challenges and partnerships are politically and socially constructed and shaped in dominant discourses and practices. The outcome of this roundtable will be to outline some guiding theories and perspectives that could shed light onto researches on partnerships and sustainable development.

Roundtable program:

Welcome and introduction

– Guglielmo Meardi (Scuola Normale Superiore)

Panellists:

– Mario Pianta (Scuola Normale Superiore), “The economics and politics of sustainability: the case of the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan”.

– Emanuela Girei (University of Sheffield), “Partnership in international development: rhetoric and realities”.

 – Bantayehu Demlie (Friedrich Alexander University), “African Perspectives on Partnership for Sustainability: Initial Insights from Humanitarian and Development Practice in Ethiopia”

– Lorenzo Zamponi, (Scuola Normale Superiore),

– Marta Pieri (Oxfam Italia), “Oxfam and Transformative Corporate Partnerships”

 – Sergio Andreis (Kyoto Club), “For decarbonisation”.

– Domenico Villano (Fondazione Finanza Etica), “Finance and sustainability”.

Moderators:

– Fiorenzo Polito, SNS

– Valerii Saenko, SNS and Sant’Anna

This is the first activity organized by POST (Partnership Orchesttrating Sustainability Transformations), a project from FAU, Scuola Normale Superiore Florence and Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. This project will develop three activities from January to April, dedicated to understanding cross sector partnerships for sustainability transformations through exploring its meaning, dimensions, context, and nature.

REGISTER HERE

WHEN

16 January 2023 from 15.00 to 18.00 (CET)

WHERE

“Altana” Conference Hall and online (via this link)

Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Scuola Normale Superiore, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence