May 2019: Participants from multi-stakeholder bodies and initiatives, CSOs and networks, the business sector, academia, regional and local levels, and parliaments gathered for the second meeting of the Open SDGclub.Berlin at the invitation of the German Council for Sustainable Development (RNE). Participants exchanged solutions-oriented ideas, discussed what is being done at the local, national, regional and global levels to implement the SDGs, and highlighted challenges and discussed ways to deal with them.

The event took place from 7-9 May 2019, in Berlin, Germany, and brought together 60 sustainability practitioners from over 30 countries.

Among other agenda items, participants met with the Advisory Committee on Sustainable Development of the German Bundestag to discuss the role of parliaments in implementing the 2030 Agenda. German sustainability actors joined the meeting on the final day to exchange information about their experiences with SDG-related initiatives. The meeting concluded with a discussion with representatives from the two German ministries responsible for SDG implementation: the Federal Ministry for the Environment and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation.

During the meeting, participants met in four teams to discuss challenges and opportunities related to the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), multi-stakeholder bodies and processes, subnational implementation of SDGs, and initiatives and projects. Recommendations from each of the teams were shared with the full group, and included:

• stakeholders should be involved in deliberations on issues that concern those stakeholders, such as the development of HLPF Guidelines for Partnerships;
• the search for partners and building of alliances across stakeholders requires the use of a common language;
• data is fundamental for initiating projects;
• links between the SDGs and existing best practices should be identified;
• before being presented to HLPF, Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) should be presented to the relevant national government; and
• there should be a focus on regular and transparent VNR follow-ups at the national level.

Participants discussed and agreed, in their personal capacities, on a Call for Action that:

• calls for all Heads of State to raise the level of awareness of and commitment to implementing and following up the 2030 Agenda;
• calls for all parties to use the UN HLPF as the one relevant global mechanism for coordinating and monitoring the 2030 Agenda; and
• encourages all stakeholders to advance the multi-stakeholder and multi-level approaches to the 2030 Agenda, respecting the needs of future generations.

[Open SDGclub.Berlin Call for Action] [SDG Knowledge Hub summary of first Open SDGclub.Berlin meeting][SDG Knowledge Hub sources]