The ‘partnership approach’ to sustainable development emerged as an innovative alternative to traditional bi-lateral and concession-style development arrangements within the Earth Summit’s (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) seminal guiding document Agenda 21. Cross-sector partnerships inherently acknowledge that the combined strengths and collective actions of partners have the potential to more efficiently and effectively deliver results than parties working independently. Moreover, development initiatives have often fallen short, not due to a shortage in demand or the ability to supply, but because of insular barriers such as inadequate rule of law, faulty regulation and tax policies, technology and end-user adaptability. In this respect, the broader inclusion and ‘buy-in’ of multiple actors working in partnership can help to constrain parochial interests that so often hold back development projects.

Since 1992, there has been growing interest in the gradually increasing number of cross-sector partnerships have been slowly but expectantly undertaken as a practicable approach to the elusive goal of sustainable development – several companies, NGOs and governments have experimented with partnerships and have had some real, albeit limited, successes. Intergovernmental agencies (in fact most of the agencies in the UN ‘family’) adopted and promoted partnership activity and by so doing have provided much needed leadership. But even the best initiatives have only had limited impact and much good work has received little or no publicity. Many see a serious gap between rhetoric and practice and it was only comparatively recently that non-trivial numbers of companies, industry sector associations and IGOs have undertaken serious engagement in sustainable development partnerships (e.g. Global Water Partnership, NEPAD, etc.). Moreover, training and learning programmes have in the last two years begun to identify and provide skills and competencies so badly needed by partnership practitioners in all sectors.

Pressed to take a critical assessment of progress since UNCED, the preparatory process for the World Summit on Sustainable Development clearly recognised that the partnership approach held untapped potential to contribute to and accelerate development activity. UN leaders and many governments successfully re-vitalised interest in partnerships, such that by the close of WSSD partnerships emerged as the prevailing way forward -- translating policy into action. In this background, hundreds of partnership projects were put together in preparation for and in the interim since the Summit; and the approach appears to be poised to deliver.

However, if sustainable development objectives and millennium development goals are to be achieved through partnerships, hundreds of thousands of actors, taking part on a voluntary, commercial or mandatory basis, will require information and services specifically tailored to the distinctive needs of partnerships.

To really impact sustainable development, partnerships will need to:

• be more widely adopted and more rigorously pursued;
• become much more focussed, efficient and effective;
• learn from the mistakes of those that have failed and from successes;
• be more ambitious in terms of reach, scale and impact.

Partnerships Central was – effectively – born in Johannesburg to provide a significant contribution to addressing these challenges, by delivering the necessary motivation, means and opportunity down to the local level.