The Sustainable Development Goals prioritize economic growth over sustainable resource use: a critical reflection on the SDGs from a socio-ecological perspective

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While the MDGs focused on improving well-being in the developing world, the 17 SDGs address all countries and aim at reconciling economic and social with ecological goals. We adopt a so...

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Published in:Sustainability science Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 1101 - 1110
Main Authors: Eisenmenger, Nina, Pichler, Melanie, Krenmayr, Nora, Noll, Dominik, Plank, Barbara, Schalmann, Ekaterina, Wandl, Marie-Theres, Gingrich, Simone
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Tokyo Springer Japan 01.07.2020
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Climate Change Management and Policy
Concepts
Earth and Environmental Science
Economic development
Economic growth
Economics
Ecosystem integrity
Empirical analysis
Environment
Environmental Economics
Environmental Management
industrialization
Knowledge Management for Sustainability Science
Landscape Ecology
Literature reviews
Methodology
Original Article
Public Health
social environment
Sustainability
sustainability science and engineering
Sustainable Development
Sustainable use
Trends
Sustainable development goals
Economic growth
Social ecology
Social–ecological transformation
Resource use
ISSN:1862-4065, 1862-4057
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While the MDGs focused on improving well-being in the developing world, the 17 SDGs address all countries and aim at reconciling economic and social with ecological goals. We adopt a social ecology perspective and critically reflect on the SDGs’ potential for monitoring, supporting, and bringing about a transformation towards sustainability. Starting from a literature review on the SDGs, we link empirical findings from social ecology with analyses of SDG targets and indicators. First, we find that the SDGs fail to monitor absolute trends in resource use and thus prioritize economic growth over ecological integrity. Second, we discuss the contradictions between economic growth and sustainable resource use in early and late stages of industrialization processes and show that they are responsible for important trade-offs among SDG targets. Third, we analyze the transformative potential of the SDGs with a focus on the actors and institutions addressed to bring about transformative change. We find that the SDGs rely mainly on those institutions responsible for unsustainable resource use, and partly propose measures that even reinforce current trends towards less sustainability. Despite ascertaining limited transformative potential to the SDGs from an analytical perspective, we conclude by stressing the strategic relevance of the SDGs for visions, research, and practices of statt towards transformative change towards sustainability.
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ISSN:1862-4065
1862-4057
DOI:10.1007/s11625-020-00813-x