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A call for the “Public Relations-imperative for sustainability”: Roles for public relations in advancing the 2030 Agenda

María José Canel, University Complutense of Madrid, mjcanel@ucm.es

Public relations communication and strategy is about relationships, and the core reason for this essay is that the 2030 Agenda is a global agreement on sustainability whose success depends on the quality, type, and amount of relationships that develop among the different concerned actors. The core argument is that progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals will parallel progress made by public relations scholars, practitioners, and students in understanding and assimilating the crucial role this discipline can play. The 2030 Agenda could provide ways of investigating “whether and how public relations can add value to society” (Heath, 2006, p. 95) and serve as a leverage point for public relations to step forward in articulating the contribution to society that literature attributes to this field (see, for instance, Heath, 2006; Yang & Taylor, 2013; Sommerfeldt, 2013).

No Sustainability Development Goals Without Relationships

On September 24, 2015, the 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) signed an extensive intergovernmental agreement aimed at pursuing 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals address a wide range of issues, including health, education, urban development, natural resources, gender equality, technological advancement, the labor market, peace, economic growth, and institutional quality. Achieving these objectives requires the collaboration of both public and private sector organizations to develop effective solutions for complex global challenges.

The necessity of this framework was further emphasized during the Coronavirus crisis, which underscored that no nation can face a lethal virus alone. Instead, it demands the collective mobilization of citizens, volunteers, civil society organizations, private companies, and international entities. COVID-19 highlighted the interconnectedness of the world, where actions—or lack thereof—in one country inevitably affect others. Graphic 1 illustrates the 17 goals.

Graphic 1. Visual representation of the 17 SDGs

Visual representation of the 17 SDGs

Since 2015, “all around the world people are heeding the call to act locally to solve problems and challenges with a global reach and significance” (Ansell, 2022, p 2). Examples include a social enterprise in Malaysia linked to a central government agency partnering with local restaurants, farmers, local government, universities, and NGOs to divert good waste away from landfills and turn it into high-quality fertilizing for biodynamic farms producing healthy foods for local people. Corporations in Norway promote social responsibility by inviting other public and private actors to collaborate on a recycling project. There is a network in Spain to assist the local health authorities to plan for and deal with the next pandemic. In Benin, a group of farmers collaborates with local government and international donors to support to encourage organic and sustainable farming. A local women’s group works to reduce child mortality in Indonesia by providing better information and access to public health clinics. A local councillor in Ireland is fighting child obesity by fostering collaboration between local schools, supermarkets, fitness clubs and civil society organizations. And companies all across the world are being faced with the need to show their stakeholders a commitment to collaborate for the advance of this agenda. These examples show that key actions implementing the 2030 Agenda are the development of interactions among different actors via which complex problems are addressed.

“In order for the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs to have the highest possible chance of success, there needs to be in place communication and awareness raising activities that seek to reach as many stakeholders as possible” (Mulholland, Bernardo, & Berger, 2017, p. 4). Indeed, the implementation of this global agreement requires of communication activities such as media campaigns, websites, videos, SDGs guides, and workshops. But what is needed is not only communication: what seems to be a critical successful factor for this agreement is the establishment of the relationships that sustain the collaboration that is at the core of the methodology for the advancement of the SDGs. Wicked as they are, faced problems can only be confronted if organizations engage with and involve stakeholders in collaboration, and for that public relations is needed (Willis, 2016). Besides, the concept of sustainability evokes an intangible dimension which is connected with those of ‘intangible resources’ and ‘intangible capital’, concepts that refer to the value that relationships can add to the tangible value created by organizations. To the extent that the 2030 Agenda is a multi- dimensional, multi-layered, and multi-stakeholder one, it could be stated that the 2030 Agenda is also a relational agenda. Will the field of public relations be absent in this crucial call?

The goal of this commentary is to urge scholars and practitioners to consider the role public relations research and practice can play in advancing the 2030 Agenda on sustainability. It is meant to serve as a call for papers for a special section on the topic in Public Relations Review in 2024 to stimulate public relations contributions to the next years of the SDG agenda. My intention is to provoke by providing a reflection about the connections between this agenda and public relations, and to call for action upon all scholars and educators, as also practitioners, in order to reach out and join forces in the name of the “sustainability imperative” for the global survival that this agenda implies.

The argument in a nutshell is the following: The UN’s SDGs set an agenda for global problem-solving which entails collaboration among many different actors, and public relations can make the difference between the success and failure of that collaboration. In other words: if the 2030 Agenda fails it will be because public relations theories, concepts and practices were not leveraged. Bold, yes. But public relations scholars and practitioners know what public relations engagement can achieve.

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