2030 Agenda mainstreaming and its influence on departmental policies

Abstract

The 2030 Agenda is regarded as an exceptional effort to bring the world to a sustainable path and achieve human development while preserving the planet (Stevens & Kanie, 2016). Focusing on the European Commission and the governments of Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom, this study evaluates if the 2030 Agenda was mainstreamed and influenced their departmental policies. To evaluate mainstreaming, this research assessed if the Agenda reached a sufficient proportion of departments and if its weight remained consistent over the years. To evaluate influence, it measured if - after the publication of the 2030 Agenda – SDG-related themes received a higher weight in the policies and if this growth was a deviation from the baseline. Meeting all four criteria constituted a necessary condition to claim that mainstreaming and influence happened.

In total, 918 departmental documents published between 2012 and 2019 were analyzed through a keywords query and a pattern-based auto-coding tool. It was found that the 2030 Agenda was mainstreamed in the EU, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the UK, and might not have been mainstreamed in Belgium and France. However - despite the associated growth of SDG themes in Luxembourg and the UK after 2015 – it could not be excluded that this growth resulted from pre-2015 trends. Therefore, it was concluded that the publication of the 2030 Agenda did not influence the weight of SDG themes in the departmental policies of the EU, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the UK.