Working together towards sustainable development; is it an easy task?

The seventeenth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 17) of the United Nations, Partnerships for the Goals, which aims to foster wider recognition of combining efforts and reconciling interests of different stakeholders in creative and constructive ways, will revitalize and give fresh impetus to the global partnership for sustainable development. Although SDG 17 looks very good on paper, the question arises as to how to promote collaborations across all societal sectors and levels. Other questions that arise include: how will it be possible to ensure that very varied stakeholders work together to systematically deliver a shared vision of SDGs, and how will this new way of working become a new normal? Two marine conservation studies located in Valencia, Spain and Normandy, France were analysed to demonstrate how a multi-actor governance context can be effective in realizing the objectives of a project, thereby illustrating how the SDG 17 goal partnership could be potentially used to promote SDG 14, which is concerned with “Life Below Water”. Although, this case study is specifically applicable to a marine conservation.