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The study underlying this chapter investigates how diverse actors in the Cauvery Delta, India, and the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, understand and live with water salinity. In focusing empirically on river deltas, this chapter addresses some of the SDG14 targets, as SDG14.2 (‘Protect and restore ecosystems’) and 14.5 (‘Conserve coastal and marine areas’) refer to the sustainable management of coastal areas as crucial targets for SDG14. Based on interviews with land users in the two deltas, in tandem with analyses of salinity maps and other policy-level knowledge artefacts, this chapter shows how, in some cases, only particular forms of knowledge are represented at the policy level, while many of the diverse viewpoints of land users are rendered invisible. In this way, delta management only meets the concerns of a select few, often professional elites, and limits land users from taking ownership of their own realities. This chapter concludes with the recommendation for water professionals, scholars, and practitioners alike, to be more open-minded, modest, and attentive to difference, by engaging more seriously with interdisciplinarity and cultivating sensibilities for listening to ‘smaller’ water stories.

Understanding the challenges and opportunities of policy coherence when dealing with wicked problems is a particularly relevant approach to policy analysis. Coherence and complexity condition each other in the context of the different policy domains, jointly offering an enabling debate angle to account for and unbox policy success and failure. A complexity perspective invites an analysis of the interdependencies between the different elements of a system (Argyris & Schön, 1996). This is very similar to the ambition of policy coherence of promoting synergies between policy domains in order to encourage policy success (Nilsson et al., 2012). The current chapter looks at the nexus between policy coherence and complexity, analyzing lessons learned from the UK context while aiming to fulfill policy commitments related to the policy goals of the Sustainable Development Framework. Looking at the United Kingdom's policy journey includes analyzing the ambitions of the United Kingdom as a European country with global presence, aiming for policy coherence and integrating, for example, its security, defense, development, and foreign policy strategies, through the Integrated Review, therefore creating the institutional arrangements for materializing ambitions across different policy domains.

The analysis developed here uses an outward perspective to understand how a complexity reading of the United Kingdom's efforts for achieving the SDGs can unveil an understanding of how and if its nature as a global governance actor within the Sustainable Development Framework has changed in significant ways and which are the potential related challenges.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) use indicators in an attempt to foster policy integration and coherence in order to achieve transformative societal change. But the SDGs, like their predecessor Millennium Goals, have not been entirely successful in this effort. Many studies have identified continuing challenges to integrating multiple goals in this way, linked to the complex patterns of interaction between the goals and the nature of the policy systems and subsystems in which they operate. This chapter builds on the policy design literature to argue that the main aim of the SDGs is to reconcile what are otherwise incoherent policy goals and inconsistent policy instruments in a process of policy integration. This process is made more complex in the case of this kind of “super-wicked” problem in which multiple actors face time constraints across multiple policy levels, sectors and venues. It identifies four different techniques for policy integration in such policy nexuses – policy harmonization, mainstreaming, coordination, and institutionalization – and assesses their possibilities for success in the SDG case against what is possible given the nature of the nexus and the capacity of governments to deal with it. The paper contributes to the current literature on policy integration, wicked problems, and the SDGs by further conceptualizing how integrative strategies can be better designed and implemented through capacity-building efforts aimed at developing coordinative relationships within conflict-ridden, multi-actor and multilevel cross-sectoral policy domains.

This chapter examines how Latvia manages Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within a policymaking process in Latvia – how SGDs are interpreted into policy actions in Latvia. This chapter is based on the two cases to reveal a link between SDGs and wicked problems. The case of education is about policy and strategic planning considering the high priority of the education sector in society. At the same time, climate change reflects the opposite perspective – limited public attention and fewer policy actions. Thus, both cases reveal actual policy implementation with several uncertainties. In the meantime, both topics are essential to identify strategies for solving wicked agendas related to policy coherence and interconnection among goals. As a result, the implementation of SDGs needs more institutional mechanisms for future-oriented policymaking where the present development needs are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

Achieving basic education and equitable education outcomes remains a challenge, therefore, improving equity in education has evolved as a particularly important policy priority in all OECD countries. This chapter concentrates on equity in the Maltese education system, with a particular focus on how the policyscape makes provision for achieving, improving, and maintaining equity in compulsory schooling. As an EU member state, Malta has been affected by the evolution, causes, and consequences of social, educational, and economic inequalities that have been an ardently contentious and controversial issue given the recent economic crisis in Europe. This chapter utilizes Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach to analyse national school inclusion policy in Malta as illustrative of policies mobilized to address the problem of inequality, therefore acknowledging the need for a provision of equity as a major agenda. The results of this small-scale study have theoretical and methodological implications for academics, policymakers, and practitioners in the educational policy field. This study highlights the fact that there are a number of persistent challenges for achieving equity in education, especially the immigrant-native educational gap, despite European policy makers having been very active in the educational field.

This study asks whether external auditors enable the transfer of policies to the United Nations organizations that they audit and, if so, what types of policies are transferred.

The empirical research is based on a content analysis of 512 external auditor recommendations from 28 pre- and post-accrual reports of 14 UN bodies.

We find that external auditors do enable policy transfer and that such involvements may, at times, veer into non-neutral policy spaces.

We did not analyze all UN organizations with accruals-based accounting. We also did not engage in a longer longitudinal study.

Our findings raise new questions about international organization accountability, the technocratic and policy-specific influences of external auditors, and open a debate about whether attempted policy transfers can be neutral.

The world’s largest group of international organizations is affiliated with the UN. External auditors help ensure that member-state monies are appropriately utilized. Our study is the first to compare pre- and post-accrual external auditor recommendations for 14 UN bodies. It is also the first to notate and study the attempted policy transfers from external auditors to the audited UN bodies.

Using Hong Kong as the context of study, this paper examines the role of education policy, particularly professional standards for teachers (PST) and principals (PSP), in enabling leadership for action on contemporary challenges and crises such as climate change.

This paper utilises critical policy analysis (CPA) and an associated analytical framework to examine key policy texts that are designed with the intent to frame the professional roles, practice and learning of educators and leaders in Hong Kong. The data analysis process involved rounds of descriptive coding, which was then collated into broader themes for discussion.

Policy texts emphasised the scope for educators to exercise leadership and decision-making that supports innovation, improvement and collaboration in the pursuit of a broad social mission for education, emphasising the skills students do and will need to respond to dynamic contemporary challenges. However, how this relates to broader policy goals, and limited articulation of the means through which this is possible, questions remain about the extent to which teachers and leaders are able to exercise leadership for action on climate change.

This study has important implications for how those in policymaking, research and practice spaces understand the framing of the role of teachers and school leaders in policy and the influence of this on their capacity to lead action on contemporary challenges and crises, such as climate change.