Stakeholder Engagement Through Economic Diplomacy

The global economy is currently at an unprecedented juncture. Within the development context, the year 2020 ushered in the Decade of Action for achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The world has embarked on this ambitious declaration while combatting the perils and far-reaching implications of the Covid-19 global pandemic, which threatens progress across all 17 of the United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whilst simultaneously placing greater urgency upon their realization. Furthermore, the pandemic has underscored the disproportionate distribution of inequities and vulnerabilities where the poorest and the most vulnerable populations, and the least developed, in-crisis and land-locked developing nations have been affected the most. Fragilities and constraints of resources - both monetary and non-monetary - have in turn highlighted the indisputable role of development cooperation for collective action. To attain this collective action, a process of creating, interpreting, and negotiating meaning to sustainable development is not merely necessary but imperative.