In 2015, the United Nations adopted unanimously an agenda for global transformation. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with associated targets and ongoing work on indicators, set out the comprehensive scope of the Agenda with an ambition that the targets be achieved by 2030. This is an extremely ambitious objective, requiring focused and concentrated action by governments, but also from business, academic institutions and civil society. Some of the challenges are pretty obvious: financing the necessary investment, even just in education and health alone, is daunting. Beyond this, it is apparent that effective projects will depend heavily on collaboration, amongst governments but also across sectors. Considerable work is necessary also to understand how action on Goals and targets overlaps. Much is yet to be learned about how the necessary collaboration can be developed and sustained.

You are invited to join partners from Australia (EU Centre at RMIT University and ANU Centre for European Studies), Singapore (EU Centre), Scotland (University of Glasgow) and New Zealand (National Centre for Research on European, University of Canterbury) in a Policy Dialogue on these issues and to explore ways of supporting collaboration and cohesive approaches to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the UN’s 2030 Agenda. This Policy Dialogue draws on a project funded by a Jean Monnet Award from the European Union’s Erasmus Plus programme.