Four governance reforms to strengthen the SDGs:A demanding policy vision can accelerate global sustainable development efforts

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Although the SDGs, which are to be achieved by 2030, are not the first attempt to guide policy actors through global goals, they go far beyond earlier agreements in their detail, comprehensiveness, and ambition. Yet the 2022 SDG Impact Assessment, conducted by a global consortium of researchers, has shown that the first phase of SDG implementation did not lead to a transformative reorientation of political systems and societies (1, 2). As the UN SDG Summit gets underway this month to review the halfway point in SDG implementation, and a further UN “Summit of the Future” is planned for 2024 to debate global governance reforms, we present here a demanding yet realistic policy vision to adjust the course of SDG implementation

Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainable Development Goals published between 2016 and April 2021. Our findings suggests that the goals have had some political impact on institutions and policies, from local to global governance. This impact has been largely discursive, affecting the way actors understand and communicate about sustainable development. More profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare. We conclude that the scientific evidence suggests only limited transformative political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals thus far

Author Correction: Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals

Correction to: Nature Sustainability https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5, published online 20 June 2022

Confronting environmental treaty implementation challenges in the Pacific Islands

For more about the East-West Center, see http://www.eastwestcenter.org/Popular literature and the entertainment industry commonly portray the Pacific Islands as a homogeneous, tropical, and timeless Eden where life is leisurely and free from care and the problems of the twenty-first century. The region's tourist industry itself does its utmost to promote that very image and first-time visitors to Hawaii today are often unprepared to discover that Honolulu, for example, is a modern metropolis with high-rise buildings and freeways. Located in the world's largest ocean, Pacific nations and territories are among the smallest on earth. The region is also one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse places in the world, as well as one of the most fragile and vulnerable--with Island countries often separated by hundreds of miles of open sea. In this paper, Pamela S. Chasek describes how, as a result of such circumstances, regional cooperation is necessary, albeit difficult. Environmental issues, particularly global warming with attendant sea-level rise, are a major concern, Chasek explains. At the same time, participation in multilateral environmental agreements is particularly demanding and often beyond the capacity of the small-island entities. Not infrequently, Chasek asserts, environmental ministries within local governments are small and lack the trained personnel and sufficient economic resources to effectively accomplish their mission

The Convention to Combat Desertification and the Role of Innovative Policy-Making Discourses: The Case of Burkina Faso

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification is a mix of traditional regime elements with a set of innovations. These innovative elements can be interpreted as emanations of policy discourses that have been gaining in importance since the introduction and the fairly broad acceptance of sustainable development and Agenda 21 as guiding conceptual frameworks. In this article I first elaborate on three of those discourses: the participatory, the decentralization and the local knowledge discourses. In a second part, I will look at Burkina Faso as an example of UNCCD policy implementation at the national and the local level (Yatenga region). It will become clear that although changes are visible in policy-making dynamics, major difficulties and obstacles remain. The CCD undeniably has an impact at the national level of policy-making. It has provided support for decentralization, for more participatory processes of policy-making and for the inclusion of local knowledge in the policy process. At the more decentralized level the impact is less clear and more difficult to distinguish. Copyright (c) 2004 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Global Environment in the 21st Century: Prospects for International Cooperation

David Downie is a contributing author (with Marc Levy), “The United Nations Environment Programme at a Turning Point: Options for Change . Book description: The Global Environment in the 21st Century: Prospects for International Cooperation examines the roles of different actors in the formulation of international and national environmental policy..the authors examine the roles of state and non-state actors in safeguarding the environment and advancing sustainable development into the 21st century. Each of five sections focus on a different actor: states, civil society, market forces, regional arrangements and international organisations. By examining the functions and capabilities of each of these actors, the authors analyse their effectiveness and their relationship with other actors both within and outside of the UN system, providing a useful framework for understanding the multi-actor, multi-issue nature of international environmental policy. -- Publisher description.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/politics-books/1015/thumbnail.jp

Global Environmental Politics: Dilemmas in World Politics, 6th Edition

Although discussions about the global environment are now a daily occurrence—from companies touting energy-saving products to politicians debating how to best address the issue of climate change and other environmental concerns—it remains a topic plagued by misinformation and ideologically skewed arguments. For more than twenty years, Global Environmental Politics has provided an up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased introduction to the world’s most pressing environmental issues, and this new edition continues the tradition. With new material on the latest international environmental regimes, the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, the challenges of regime implementation, and the impact of the global economic crises on the global environment, the authors offer a comprehensive overview of the environment and international politics. It is vital reading for anyone wishing to understand the current state of the field and to make informed decisions about which policies might best safeguard our environment for the future.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/politics-books/1030/thumbnail.jp