Regionalizing the Sustainable Development Goals for Island Societies: Lessons From Iceland and Newfoundland

Abstract

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework that makes the concept of “sustainable development” more actionable. The nature of island societies — where political jurisdictions overlap in complex ways with land and oceanic ecologies — makes the question of who is responsible for SDG implementation and governance particularly important. We compare SDG interpretations and perceptions of SDG governance in Iceland and Newfoundland using survey and focus group data with stakeholders from government, business, labour, civil society, academia, and youth. Our research questions are as follows: How do research participants view the SDGs in relation to ensuring sustainable futures for their respective island societies? How do research participants view the roles of government and other institutions in implementing sustainability? Answering these questions gives insight into a third theoretically valuable question: Is it the state versus subnational jurisdiction distinction, or is it the common small polity/island dynamics of these cases that is important for understanding the interpretations of the SDGs and their implementation? The interpretations of regionalizing and localizing the SDGs are similar across our two cases, which lends support to a small polity/islandness view of how the SDGs are translated for island societies.