Tourism plays a crucial role in enabling the achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its focus on partnerships as a means of implementation. South Pacific leadership in the implementation of the SDGs highlights the importance of civil society partnerships in localizing Agenda 2030 to respond to national priorities. However, there has been limited research on how partnerships can best respond to local agendas in a tourism context. This paper examines the SDGs from the perspective of two community-focused tourism businesses in Fiji, specifically concentrating on SDG 17 to explore how partnerships between tourism businesses and local community stakeholders can support local development outcomes and contribute to the attainment of the SDGs more broadly. Findings showed that partnerships are integral to enabling meaningful local development outcomes, also noting points of disconnection. Findings exposed the paradox between tourism growth as a strategy for achieving the SDGs and the need to grow slowly if community needs and priorities are to be considered. Ultimately the research aims to suggest opportunities for tourism and community partnerships to rise to the challenge of addressing the SDGs in a way that respects local priorities and enables meaningful outcomes for destination communities.

This paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level. Using the change in night lights as an alternative measure of economic activity, we hypothesize the non-robust results regarding the effects of aid types on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being treated as a unitary component. Using geo-coded data for donor aid to first-level 2,124 administrative regions (ADM1) and 2,082 second-level administrative regions (ADM2) in Malawi over the 1996-2011 period, we test whether aid type affects development, measured as locational nighttime light growth. Our preferred identification strategy exploits variation arising from a town receiving a specified aid type. Results in some geographical locations and towns indicate that we do not have sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis of the research study at 5% level. However, other geographical locations like Zomba indicate that aid category has a significant bearing on local economic growth. This is supported by a significant p=2.76% value which implies that categorical aid drives economic growth. Cross city evidence shows that category aid type brings both negative and positive results depending on location within the country.

Dialogue and capacity building of local and regional authorities in EU partner countries in the fields of development and local governance