Type II Partnerships

Type II partnerships were developed at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. Arising in opposition to the state-centred eco-governmentality of previous approaches to sustainable development policy, the partnerships facilitate the inclusion of private and civil actors into the management of sustainable development. The partnerships are employed alongside traditional intergovernmental mechanisms in order to effectively implement the United Nations' Agenda 21 and Millennium Development Goals, particularly at sub-national level. Although widely acknowledged as one of the most innovative and effective developments in global environmental governance in recent years, the partnerships have faced criticism due to fears of a lack of accountability, 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 in particular.

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 transnational agreements in order to meet specific sustainable development goals. 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 and participatory 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.

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