Discourse Surrounding the Implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals on Micro and Macro Levels: Utrecht as a Global Goals City

Abstract

As the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) are still a recently developed framework, not many studies have been conducted investigating the interplay between their implementation and discourse on macro and micro levels. More specifically, no previous studies have focused on investigating the specific local implementation of a Global Goals city. Therefore, this thesis aimed to provide an overview of the local approach of Utrecht, a Dutch Global Goals city, using theories of intercultural and organisational communication. These include theories such as the concept of discourse, the Montreal School’s theory of text and conversation, the Four Flows and Holliday’s (2016) concepts of threading and blocking. The analysis was performed using methods such as a document analysis, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic research. The subject of the document analysis was a webpage from the municipality’s official website and the interviewees included a representative of Utrecht’s municipality and of the organisation Utrecht4GlobalGoals. The ethnographic research was focused on three projects in Utrecht. The results showed that Utrecht as a Global Goals city employs a bottom-up approach and makes use of storytelling on both local and international scales to increase awareness of the SDGs. Additionally, it was found that the discussed theories served as good models to describe the discourse surrounding the implementation of the SDGs, as well as to analyse Utrecht’s local organisational culture as a Global Goals city. Finally, the SDGs were found to be used as a common language, as well as a way of threading between different cities and countries.