Governing synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs: The potential and limitations for multistakeholderism in the context of prioritization

Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are intended to be integrated and indivisible, requiring governance approaches able to account for synergies and tradeoffs in their implementation. However, while a growing body of literature discusses SDG interlinkages, it remains largely theoretical, and only a few offer empirical insights, most of which focus on the national or subnational level. This article shifts the focus to transnational, voluntary governance efforts on a global level by analyzing over 3400 actions registered on the UN SDG Action Platform that simultaneously address two or more SDGs. Using descriptive statistics and network analysis, we find that social and environmental SDGs are more frequently prioritized than economic goals, and that cross-domain combinations are relatively rare. These findings raise important questions about the capacity of multistakeholder governance to foster integrated implementation of the SDGs. The article contributes to the literature on SDG interactions and multistakeholderism by addressing a key empirical gap and identifying governance gaps to address SDG interlinkages.