Realising the aspirations of the “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) to reduce inequality, limit ecological damage, and secure resilient livelihoods is a grand challenge for sustainability science, civil society and government. We identify three key governance challenges that are central for implementing the SDGs: (i) cultivating collective action by creating inclusive decision spaces for stakeholder interaction across multiple sectors and scales; (ii) making difficult trade-offs, focusing on equity, justice and fairness; and (iii) ensuring mechanisms exist to hold societal actors to account regarding decision-making, investment, action, and outcomes. The paper explains each of these three governance challenges, identifying possible avenues for addressing them, and highlights the importance of interlinkages between the three challenges.

实现“可持续发展目标”（SDGs）的愿望以减少不平等现象，限制生态破坏并确保生计具有韧性，这对可持续发展科学，公民社会和政府而言都是巨大的挑战。我们确定了三个关键的治理挑战，这些挑战对于实现可持续发展目标至关重要：（ii）进行艰难的权衡，重点放在公平，正义和公平上；（iii）确保存在使社会行为者对决策，投资，行动和成果负责的机制。本文解释了这三个治理挑战中的每一个，确定了解决这些挑战的可能途径，并强调了这三个挑战之间相互联系的重要性。