Many observers expected the Sustainable Development Goals to strengthen the institutional architecture of global sustainability governance within the United Nations system and beyond. This ambition was already part of the negotiations of the goals. Here, the United Nations General Assembly had created an ‘open working group’ of only 30 countries, driven by fears that negotiations with universal participation would not lead to an agreement. However, when over 70 countries wanted to join this group, the United Nations found an innovative way to accommodate them by sharing the 30 seats among ‘duos’ and ‘trios’ of countries. In another innovation, the open working group first went through a ‘stocktaking’ process to create a common understanding of the issues and to create legitimacy among governments and stakeholders (Chasek and Wagner 2016; Dodds, Donoghue and Roesch 2016; Kamau, Chasek and O’Connor 2018).

However, some studies criticized these negotiations for being ‘unpolitical’ and brushing over conflicts (Rivera 2017; Thérien and Pouliot 2020).

The academic literature has characterized the 2030 Agenda as ‘governing through goals’ (Kanie and Biermann 2017: ix). Typical features include a goalsetting process that aims to be broadly inclusive; the non-legally binding nature of the goals; reliance on weak institutional arrangements to promote and implement the goals; and extensive leeway for states or other actors and institutions in responding to the goals (Biermann, Kanie and Kim 2017; Vijge et al. 2020: 256).

Some studies argued that goal-setting can be impactful and that the Sustainable Development Goals encapsulate ‘seeds for transformation’ (Stevens and Kanie 2016). Yet, global governance through goals remains a contested strategy (Kanie et al. 2017: 6; Young 2017: 38). Legal scholars emphasize that goals that are aspirational need additional mechanisms to reach beyond the fragmented and compartmentalized system of international law (Kim 2016: 17). In principle, such mechanisms can be found in the other parts of the 2030 Agenda, especially in the sections on the means of implementation and on the follow-up and review.