Samuel, Naima2026-06-102026-06-102026-06-102026-06-05https://hdl.handle.net/10012/23591The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) position partnerships as a central mechanism for advancing sustainability objectives by enabling coordinated efforts across multiple actors and sectors, particularly in addressing complex challenges like climate change. Despite the prominence of partnerships, there remains limited understanding of how cross-sector partnerships function in practice, particularly in local contexts where implementation occurs across municipal, community, and private-sector actors. Existing research has often emphasized formal structures, early phases of collaboration, or normative commitments, providing relatively limited insight into how partnerships are enacted during implementation, how they deliver outcomes, and how equity is embedded and sustained over time. Organized as a three-paper thesis, this dissertation combines a systematic review of sustainability partnerships situated within the SDGs with a comparative qualitative analysis of twelve Canadian local climate action partnerships to examine how cross-sector partnerships are structured, enacted, and adapted, and how effectiveness and equity emerge through the interaction of partnership structures and partner agency. Drawing on document analysis and semi-structured interviews, the analysis is informed by structuration theory, which provides a lens for examining how structures enable and constrain action and how partners reproduce or adapt these arrangements through practice. The findings show that the effectiveness of cross-sector partnerships in local climate action depends on more than formal design alone. Outcomes are shaped through the interaction of partnership structures and partner agency, as structural arrangements influence coordination, participation, and resource allocation while partners interpret, enact, and adapt these arrangements over time. Equity is similarly shaped through these dynamics, not through representational diversity or stated commitments alone, but through deliberate adjustments to decision-making, engagement, and resourcing structures. Co-design emerges as a central practice through which partners collectively reshape partnership arrangements and sustain equity over time. The dissertation contributes an integrated understanding of how cross-sector partnerships support effective and equitable action toward sustainability goals, using local climate mitigation as a site of implementation within the broader sustainability agenda. It extends structuration theory by showing how structure–agency dynamics are enacted through collective practice in multi-actor implementation contexts, highlighting the role of co-design, the influence of partnership arrangements and lifecycle dynamics, and the importance of aligning structures and agency to support both effectiveness and equity. It also offers practical insights for understanding, designing, and adapting partnerships to better support coordinated, inclusive, and effective local climate action.encross-sector partnershipslocal climate actionequitystructuration theoryco-designsustainabilitysustainable development goalspartnership structurespartner agencystrategic outcomesDoctoral Thesis