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While most of today's global challenges are deeply interconnected, international organizations often operate in silos. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, have been advanced as a new agenda to break up these silos and to better integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Yet little is known about whether the SDGs had any effects in advancing policy integration. To investigate this, we conducted a quantitative content analysis on the website texts of 159 international organizations. Our study addresses two questions: (1) whether international organizations increasingly engage with the SDGs in their work; and (2) whether this engagement increased their attention for policy integration. Our results show that the SDGs are indeed increasingly used by most international organizations. However, this has not affected policy integration. We conclude with some possible explanations for this lack of effect and propose several research avenues. • International organizations are increasingly using the SDGs. • Increased SDG use does not lead to higher policy integration. • Environmental organizations use SDGs less than non-environmental organizations. • We extracted 3 years of website texts of 159 international organizations. • We used keywords in website texts to assess SDG use and policy integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social sciences have engaged since the late 1980s in international collaborative programmes to study questions of sustainability and global change. This article offers an in-depth analysis of the largest long-standing social-science network in this field: the Earth System Governance Project. Originating as a core project of the former International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, the Earth System Governance Project has matured into a global, self-sustaining research network, with annual conferences, numerous taskforces, research centers, regional research fellow meetings, three book series, an open access flagship journal, and a lively presence in social media. The article critically reviews the experiences of the Earth System Governance network and its integration and interactions with other programmes over the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines conditions and pathways that explain variation in the adoption of renewable energy (RE) in Nigeria's 36 states based on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. Using three analytical lenses proposed by the multi-level socio-technical theory (niches, regimes, and landscapes), we examine RE adoption in these states. While all three lenses explain variation to some extent, a combination of regime and landscape characteristics, enables states to overcome dependence on oil while triggering the adoption of RE. States with high income and a regime featuring institutions and coalitions supporting transitions establish themselves as pioneers. States with medium/low income and a regime characterised by a weak pro-RE political coalition support emerge as laggards. Hence we conclude that the role of the regime and particularly political actors therein, is central in energy transition processes among Nigerian states. This has implications for future transition attempts in Nigeria and developing (rentier) countries, generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The SDGs have failed to reduce fragmentation in global sustainability governance. • We provide a novel network model to measure fragmentation using website data. • We draw on 1.5 million hyperlinks connecting 276 international organizations. • Silos are strengthening around the 17 issue areas of the SDGs. • Siloization is stronger outside the UN system and among regional organizations. Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. Enhancing inter-organizational coordination and cooperation is thus often recognized as an important reform challenge in global sustainability governance. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2015, thus explicitly aim at advancing policy coherence and institutional integration among the myriad international institutions. Yet, have these goals been effective in this regard? We assess here the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the network structure of 276 international organizations in the period 2012–2019, that is, four years before and four years after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals. The network structure was approximated by analyzing data from the websites of these 276 international organizations that were joined by more than 1.5 million hyperlinks, which we collected using a custom-made web crawler. Our findings are contrary to what is widely expected from the Sustainable Development Goals: we find that fragmentation has in fact increased after the Sustainable Development Goals came into effect. In addition, silos are increasing around the 17 SDGs as well as around the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global agrifood governance faces enormous environmental and social challenges that demand the development of effective, just, and legitimate solutions. In this context, private governance institutions, in the form of private standards and certification schemes, have developed into a major institutional response in the pursuance of sustainable agrifood development. While International Relations and political theory have examined private governance institutions in agrifood from the perspective of democratic legitimacy and problem-solving effectiveness, surprisingly little attention has been paid on their relationship to questions of equity and justice, however. As a result we lack systematic understanding of the justice concerns raised by private governance; we cannot effectively address injustice in agrifood governance; and we lack guidance on principles that can attribute ethical responsibilities to private institutions. This paper makes an attempt to outline the basis for a normative framework on agrifood governance, in general, and private agrifood governance, more specifically by delineating: (a) the reasons why private governance institutions fall under the scope of justice; (b) the principles, subjects and dimensions of just private agrifood governance; and (c) institutional transformations to foster agrifood justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past fifteen years a number of transnational certification and labeling schemes have emerged with the aim to foster sustainable fisheries and aquaculture practices worldwide. Despite notable successes in the uptake and implementation of these standards, few measurable environmental improvements have been achieved on a global scale to date. This paper explores the conditions for effective governance taking into account external and internal attributes of the relevant rule-setting organizations. The analysis provided in this paper is situated in a broader debate regarding the effectiveness of transnational forms of governance and thereby contributes to recent efforts to build clearer theoretical propositions on the basis of more nuanced theoretically and empirically informed analyses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]