Lecture 4 - Sustainable Development and the SDGs PDF

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Lecture 4 - Sustainable Development and the SDGs
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Week 1 Lecture 4 - Sustainable Development and the SDGs Part One: Theory, background and critiques What is ‘Sustainable Development’ - ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ - Gro Harlem-Brundtland in Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, 1987 - So what’s new? - Focus on future generations - Recognition of limits to natural resource regeneration Background of Sustainable Development - 1970s – Global South/developing countries ‘catching up’ with the North – following resource-intensive development model (neoliberal modernisation theory) - This made visible a number of problems: - impacts of pollution and resource depletion on human health - problems of rapid urbanisation as people moved to cities as sites of production - limits to resource regeneration and sustainability – production could not keep up with consumption. - Club of Rome report - The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) - UN Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972 – first mention of - ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ development at an international forum. - Tensions between Global North and South – Global South countries seem by some as new environmental polluters, but invoked the ‘right to development.’ - they have a right to development as this is what the Global North had just done earlier - ‘Our Common Future’ - World Commission on Environment and Development (1987)‘Sustainable Development’ as ‘a marriage of economy and ecology’. - Heralds ‘a new era of economic growth’ where growth must be pursued ‘in harmony with the changing productive potential of the ecosystem’. Three pillars of sustainable development - Getting the balance between the three ‘pillars’ is an ongoing source of tension and debate in research, policy and practice.

Contradictions and controversies - Development and sustainability – how compatible? (Redclift, 2018) - Sustainability – term borrowed from the natural sciences, most commonly deployed in relation to forestry and fisheries. - Development – political economic term, concerned with human progress and wellbeing (or economic progress thinly veiled as human progress) . - ‘Many of the life-support systems which ensure human survival and continuity were put at risk by human-made ‘development’. - Redclift, 2018, ‘Sustainable Development in the Age of Contradictions’, Development and Change, 49: 3, pp.695-707 - Which needs are prioritised? - Which human needs are prioritised over others - think about intersectionality - not all human needs can be prioritised at the same time Who sustains whose development? - ‘’Progress’ has come at a price: global warming, ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, air and water pollution are all global problems with wide-ranging impacts on human populations, impacts that are significantly more harmful for the rural poor in Third World countries, and for people who derive their sustenance from the land.’ - Banerjee, S. B. (2003), ‘Who sustains whose development? Sustainable Development and the reinvention of nature’ Organization Studies, 24(1), 143-180, p.144 Sustainable development a (neo)colonial project? (Banjeree) - The Global North telling the Global South how they should be developing - when GS countries are put forward as villains in terms of pollution - GN don’t acknowledge their role in pollution - perpetuates dependency - ‘[...] the ‘global’ solutions advocated by the industrialised countries perpetuate the dependency relations of colonialism. Images of polluted Third World cities abound in the media with no acknowledgement of the corresponding responsibility of industrialised countries’ (Banerjee, p.157). - The ‘invention of under-development’– ordering of the world according to countries’ progress towards (western, neoliberal) model of development. - Rather than reshaping markets and production processes to fit the logic of nature, ‘sustainable development’ uses the logic of markets and capitalist accumulation to determine the future of nature – anthropocentric economic model exported to the GS through logic of ‘development’. - Natural resources in Global South often exploited for debt servicing/ to meet the demands of (Global North-imposed) structural adjustment plans for economic development.

Sustainable development: Three perspectives (Sachs, 2000) - The contest perspective – focus on ‘green’ economic growth and technological efficiency. Countries need to grow in green or sustainable ways. - Countries that pursue environmentally damaging industrial and economic development seen as acting at odds with the goal of sustainable development makes a system of environmental villains - World Bank view? - The astronaut perspective – planet as a ‘scientific and political object’ - the earth from space, de-territorialised view- shared responsibility for environmental problems and solutions - IPCC view? - Less focus on who is doing what - see the planet as an entity - no borders or territories - contains human race working together - sharing responsibility for the problems and solutions - not so concerned with the politics - coming together as a global community - The home perspective – attributes environmental degradation to the historical-present day ‘over-development’ of Global North countries. Value of ‘development’ itself is called into question, sustainable development is seen as a self-contradiction and goal should be sustainability (not SD). - ‘Polluter pays’ principle – role of Global North countries is to contribute financial capital rather than knowledge/moral leadership – Small NGO, social movements and ‘dissident intellectual’ view Sachs, W. (2000) ‘Sustainable Development’ in Redclift & Woodgate, The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology.

Week 1 Lecture 4 - Sustainable Development and the SDGs Part Two: the SDGs Agenda 21 - One of the main outcomes of the Rio Earth Summit (1992). - ‘A comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.’ - Multi-level responses, strong focus on ‘broadest public participation’ in actions taken to engender ‘sustainable transitions’ in all areas of society. - Agenda 21 intended to provide a societal foundation for achieving sustainable development – responsibility not just of governments but of all segments of society.

SDGs - 17 goals, which replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). - Goals draw together 169 targets to reach by 2030 - The goals and targets are universal, not just applicable to ‘developing’ countries.

SDGs as a ‘nexus’: Integration and interdependence - Economic, social and environmental sustainability underpin all goals. - Goals can only be achieved as a set – each relies upon the other in a complex way . - Recognition of interdependence between places and institutions (Goal 17 – Global Partnerships).

http://sdgtoolkit.org/tool/a-nexus-approach-for-the-sdgs-interlinkages-between-the-goals-and-tar gets/

Progress towards the SDGs - In September 2019, the UN Secretary-General announced the ‘Decade of action’ (2020-2030) towards the SDGs, comprising: - Global action - Local action - ‘People action’ (youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia and other stakeholders all named as important). - Annual regional monitoring system – designed to facilitate regional cooperation, yet based on national reporting towards 169 targets (see Georgeson and Maslin, 2017). - Progress so far has been uneven, by UN’s own measures https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/26727S DG_Chart_2020.pdf (published May 2020)

Beyond countries and regions: International alliances… - Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), founded in 1999, comprising 44 small island and low-lying coastal states from 4 continents. - Core lobbying foci: climate change, sustainable development, ocean conservation. - Lobbying by AOSIS was key to inclusion of 1.5°C rather than 2°C in Paris Agreement (see Benjamin and Thomas, 2016). - ‘To be a small island and/or a low-lying coastal state is to be vulnerable to a host of challenges—from the environmental to the geo-political to the social, which have only grown more severe over time. Many of our member states walk a tightrope, developing

new strengths and marshalling existing ones to help them reach towards the—seemingly unattainable—goal of sustainable development’ (AOSIS.org) Is ‘Sustainable Development’ possible? - (Necessary) economic growth in some countries requires economic slowing down or ‘degrowth’ in others (reversal of ‘modernisation theory’?). - Lag effect of fossil fuels in the atmosphere – have humans done too much damage to the planet to hamper peaceful and harmonious living? - Can economic, social and environmental sustainability ever be balanced? - Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ model – described as ‘economics for the 21st century - calls for a change of goal: from economic growth to ‘meeting the needs of all, within the needs of the planet’. Who sets the agenda for achieving sustainable development? - Neoliberal, market-driven model of sustainable development fails to adequately tackle the unsustainable nature of economic growth, and entrenched power inequalities between countries. - Whose science? Whose knowledge? ‘The new language of sustainable development ‘scientific understanding’,‘citizenship’, ‘species rights’ ‘intergenerational equity’ obscures the inequalities and cultural distinctions surrounding environmental resources’ (Banerjee, 2003) - can’t assume all countries will have the same goals, priorities and knowledge frameworks...