ABSTRACT
The term “partnerships” is a broad umbrella. It covers governance arrangements of various characteristics—more or less decentralized and voluntary; and more or less formal. Partnerships lack traditional top-down steering and regulation and involve actors at global as well as local scales. Since the 1990s, this mode of environmental governance has proliferated rapidly—from the about 200 partnerships registered as official Type II outcomes of the 2002 Johannesburg Summit to the thousands listed since 2012 on the “Partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals” platform created by the United Nations. For nongovernmental organizations, partnerships are means to engage in direct governance to advance specific normative or implementation agendas. Partnerships also facilitate access to powerful actors such as states, intergovernmental organizations, and companies and opportunities to establish a common collaborative purpose. Partnerships as modes of governance are thus closely embedded in broader institutional and policy structures.
