IDDRI has highlighted the universal nature of the SDGs to show that the European Union and its member states have a key role to play in their implementation, in order to drive forward sustainable development policies, to pave the way towards a new European project, and to set the example of a progressive Europe worldwide. The SDGs are concerned with the most pressing problems facing European citizens, including employment, health, education and inequalities.
Coalitions of European think tanks
With this in mind and in order to reveal the “champions” of SDG implementation, and to stimulate comparisons and good practice between States, civil society and companies, IDDRI has formed a coalition of pioneering European think tanks in this field: the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), the German Development Institute (DIE), the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP). These actors met twice in Paris in 2016: during the conference “Sustainable development: it’s time!”, which was itself held just a few days after an IASS conference on SDG implementation in Germany; then for the presentation of an IDDRI report on SDG implementation in France (October 2016). IDDRI also presented its research to European civil society, in particular at the EU EESC.
This mode of action is also the one IDDRI uses for EU cooperation and development policies, as an active member of the European Think Tanks Group. Several exchanges have been organised with Neven Mimica, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, and Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in order to foster closer linkages between European Union internal and foreign policy in the management of global crises.
Publication of the Global Sustainable Development Report
IDDRI also co-organised the launch of the Global Sustainable Development Report, a United Nations publication aimed in particular at informing the work of the HLPF, at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development with the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD – French national research institute for sustainable development) and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA).