"Partners for Change": Religious perspectives on sustainable development

Religious actors have the potential to play a central role in development cooperation work, especially when it comes to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in New York in 2015. The aim of the international conference “Partners for Change – Religions and the Agenda 2030” was to work out and concretize this contribution. It took place on 17 and 18 February 2016 at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The conference was organised by the Development Policy Forum of the  Deutschen Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

More than 200 international representatives from religious communities, policy-making bodies, civil society, and academia, as well as multilateral and bilateral development organisation accepted the invitation to come to Berlin to discuss the contribution religions could make in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to develop proposals for development partnerships. adelphi supported the conference by providing documentation for three topical forums (on Planet, Peace and Prosperity).