Author(s): Elena Bulmer & Cristina Del Prado
The seventeenth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 17) of the United Nations, “Partnerships for the Goals” aims to, “strengthen the means of the implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”. The successful implantation of this goal will aid the execution and achievement of the other sixteen goals. This article explores the importance and viability of SDG 17, “Partnering for the Goals” through the analysis of one marine conservation case study. More specifically the applicability of SDG 17 was analyzed so as to assess the viability of SDG 14, “Life under Water”. This case study evaluated a marine conservation case study based in Normandie (France) that deals with the conservation of bottlenose dolphins. It presents a very interesting stakeholder situation, where we see that there are conflicting interests among governmental authorities, conservation organizations, recreational and commercial fishermen, among others. A case study approach was undertaken for the data collection using desk-based research and semi-structured interviews. The interview process was performed between October 2019 and March 2020. In total, 19 different stakeholders were interviewed. For the data analyses, a stakeholder register, PI Matrices and a stakeholder map were used, and to complement the latter narratives were developed. It was found that most project stakeholders seem to be in favour of the Normand-Breton bottlenose dolphin conservation project, however the recreational and professional fishermen as well as the promoters of renewable energy projects did not appear to support it. Stakeholder engagement analyses are especially useful in the application of SDG at the project level. However, in some instances such as in the case study analysed, many obstacles may be encountered in the process of creating these global alliances and partnerships. Although this case study is specifically applicable to a marine conservation context, it may be extrapolated and applied to any other SDG context.