The lecture looks at the prospects for successful implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Peter Haas analyses the social, political and institutional infrastructure through which more effective global governance could become possible. He also examines the role of different international organisations in implementing the SDGs, both individually and in interaction with each other. He finds a mismatch between the tasks of the international organisations that are supposed to coordinate the implementation of the SDGs and their existing resources. In his conclusions, Haas proposes a linkage of SDGs as well as a reorganisation of responsibilities that assigns more responsibility for the implementation of these goals to international organisations with greater capacities.
Peter M. Haas is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS). He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986 and has been at UMASS since 1987. He has also been a visiting scholar at Yale, Brown, Oxford, Keio University and the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin. He has published extensively on theories of international relations and global governance, constructivism, international environmental politics and the interplay between science and international institutions. Haas has consulted for the Commission on Global Governance, the United Nations Environment Programme, the governments of the United States, France, Portugal and Switzerland, as well as the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Resources Institute.