Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the shared plan adopted by countries around the world to end extreme poverty, reduce inequality, and protect the planet by 2030. In 2015, the SDGs were adopted by 193 countries and they emerged from the most inclusive and comprehensive negotiations in UN history. The UN claims that they have inspired people across sectors, geographies, and cultures, however, achieving the SDGs by 2030 will require “heroic and imaginative effort, determination to learn about what works, and agility to adapt to new information and changing trends” (United Nations Foundation n.d.). 

(United Nations Foundation, n.d.)

Shortcomings of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Reformist Approaches to Sustainability

Capitalism plays a negative role in the climate crisis because it is largely responsible for the damage that has been done in the past and it hinders efforts aimed at changing damaging structures in our society.  Capitalist culture promotes reformist approaches to development, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, which view further development and economic growth as the answer to the world’s problems. Unfortunately, this approach largely ignores social issues and instead falsely suggests that policy changes can divert the world from its current fateful path. In contrast, transformative approaches to development take a much more holistic approach to solving our current issues. They view all aspects of life as interconnected and recognize that development is the cause of our current predicament, not the answer. 

The reformist approach to development allows for the reduction of a natural capital asset so long as another capital asset is increased to compensate for the reduction . This allows for a high degree of substitutability between all forms of capital resources . This approach imposes some degree of exploitation of  natural resources; however, these restrictions are not based on concern for ecosystems, but instead on concern about the ability of ecosystems to continue to meet human needs. Ultimately, the reformist approach is aligned with neoliberal thinking because it promotes a growth-oriented model of development. However, it is corrupt because powerful states use institutions such as the UN to create environmental norms that serve their own interests. This is because states have a powerful interest in ensuring that considerations of cost, benefits, or problems of domestic implementation remain dominant factors in shaping policy. Advocating for the reformist approach to development enables powerful states to become catalysts in the promotion of sustainable development—engaging in various forms of corporate environmental responsibility and encouraging green consumerism—while essentially just continuing with their old practices (Baker 2022). Additionally, there is no guarantee that emphasizing development will resolve traditional discrimination and violence against women, youth, children, intersex minorities, and landless and unemployed classes, races, castes, and ethnicities (Kothari et al. 2019).

The logic behind the reformist approach to development is that poverty causes environmental degradation and environmental degradation can be reduced by reducing poverty. This faulty logic implies that developing countries need economic growth, which requires more liberal markets. This approach relies on increased energy efficiency through technological innovation to promote sustainable consumption, however, consumption levels are not addressed. Instead, faith is simply placed in finding technical solutions to ensure resource efficiency in delivering consumer goods. It is much easier to promote the reformist approach to development because the social justice aspect of sustainable development is ignored by ecological modernization. This results in ethical considerations being sidelined due to a strict focus on efficiency procedures. Additionally, ecological modernization and its expression through green economy models sees growth as a solution to the ecological crisis. This reformist approach offers an advantage to industrial society because it offers the hope that environmental problems can be addressed without having to redirect the course of societal development away from its current unsustainable path. Ultimately, the reformist approach recognizes the serious problem of environmental change and offers a symbolic commitment to sustainable development. However, the issue is that it fails to recognize the causes of environmental change and does not offer real solutions to address the causes (Baker 2022).

Economic Transformations Required for Delivering Sustainable Development Goals

The Green Economy Coalition (GEC) recognizes that the solution to the climate crisis and suffering felt by millions of people around the world is not further development, but instead, a complete transformation of economic, political, and social structures. The GEC explains that over time, global economies have made huge advances in material prosperity, however, this progress has become destructive as development has caused humans to strain the earth’s capacity and resources. Unfortunately, economies are measured and managed in ways that incentivise overconsumption, damage nature and social bonds, and drive climate change (Green Economy Coalition n.d.). The GEC suggests that while the commitment of the global community to tackling these problems through the SDGs is historic, significant economic, societal, and institutional changes are needed if these goals are to be reached by 2030. 

The general consensus, now, is that a fast and fair transformation of the global economies is needed to create a more sustainable society and reverse climate change while it is still possible. The GEC aims to create an Inclusive Green Economy (IGE), which delivers the economic, social, and environmental outcomes sought by the Standard Development Goals (Green Economy Coalition n.d.). The inclusive green economy follows five principles that draw on important presidents in international policy. The GEC believes that the five principles together can guide economic reform in diverse contexts. 

(Green Economy Coalition n.d.)

Principles from The Green Economy Coalition (Green Economy Coalition n.d.):

  • Wellbeing Principle
    • The green economy is people-centered. Its purpose is to create genuine, shared prosperity.
    • It focuses on growing wealth that will support wellbeing. This wealth is not merely financial, but includes the full range of human, social, physical and natural capitals.
    • It prioritizes investment and access to the sustainable natural systems, infra-structure, knowledge and education needed for all people to prosper.
    • It offers opportunities for green and decent livelihoods, enterprises and jobs.
    • It is built on collective action for public goods, yet is based on individual choices.
  • Justice Principle
    • The green economy is inclusive and non- discriminatory. It shares decision-making, benefits and costs fairly; avoids elite capture; and especially supports women’s empowerment.
    • It promotes the equitable distribution of opportunity and outcome, reducing disparities between people, while also giving sufficient space for wildlife and wilderness.
    • It takes a long-term perspective on the economy, creating wealth and resilience that serve the interests of future citizens, while also acting urgently to tackle today’s multi-dimensional poverty and injustice.
    • It is based on solidarity and social justice, strengthening trust and social ties, and supporting human rights, the rights of workers, indigenous peoples and minorities, and the right to sustainable development.
    • It promotes empowerment of Micro-Small-Medium- Enterprises (MSMEs), social enterprises, and sustainable livelihoods.
    • It seeks a fast and fair transition and covers its costs – leaving no-one behind, enabling vulnerable groups to be agents of transition, and innovating in social protection and reskilling.
  • Planetary Boundaries Principle
    • An inclusive green economy recognizes and nurtures nature’s diverse values–functional values of providing goods and services that underpin the economy, nature’s cultural values that underpin societies, and nature’s ecological values that underpin all of life itself.
    • It acknowledges the limited substitutability of natural capital with other capitals, employing the precautionary principle to avoid loss of critical natural capital and breaching ecological limits, including climate stability.
    • It invests in protecting, growing and restoring biodiversity, soil, water, air, climate and other natural systems.
    • It is innovative in managing natural systems, informed by their properties such as circularity, and aligning with local community livelihoods based on biodiversity and natural systems.
  • The Efficiency and Sufficiency Principle
    • An inclusive green economy is low-carbon, resource-conserving, diverse and circular. It embraces new models of economic development that enable economic growth without raising resource consumption and that reduce negative social and environmental impacts.
    • It recognises there must be a significant global shift to limit consumption of natural resources to physically sustainable levels if we are to decarbonise economies and remain within planetary boundaries.
    • It recognizes a ‘social floor’ of basic goods and services consumption that is essential to meet people’s wellbeing and dignity, as well as unacceptable ‘peaks’ of consumption.
    • It aligns prices, subsidies and incentives with true costs to society, through mechanisms where the ‘polluter pays’ and/or where benefits accrue to those who deliver inclusive green outcomes.
  • The Good Governance Principle
    • An inclusive green economy is evidence-based – its norms and institutions are interdisciplinary, deploying both sound science and economics along with local knowledge for adaptive strategy.
    • It is supported by institutions that are integrated, collaborative and coherent–horizontally across sectors and vertically across governance levels – and with adequate capacity to meet their respective roles in effective, efficient and accountable ways.
    • It requires public participation, prior informed consent, social dialogue, transparency, democratic accountability, and freedom from vested interests in all institutions – public, private and civil society– so that enlightened leadership is complemented by societal demand.
    • It promotes devolved decision- making for local economies and management of natural systems while maintaining strong common, centralized standards, procedures, and compliance systems.
    • It builds a financial system with the purpose of delivering wellbeing and sustainability, set up in ways that safely serve the interests of society.

Ultimately, Sustainable Development Goals and other reformist solutions consider environmental problems as primarily technical issues and support the impossible goal of continuing economic growth without harming the environment. In contrast, transformative approaches emphasize that without fundamental social and cultural transformation, technological advancements and economic developments will not solve the issues facing the world (Kothari et al. 2019). A truly inclusive green economy will not be achieved without a process of structural transformation, during which the economy will increasingly embody the five principles outlined by the Green Economy Coalition (Green Economy Coalition n.d.).

Works Cited

Baker, Susan, et al. “Sustainable Development: Between Reformist Change and Radical Transformation.” The Routledge Handbook of Democracy and Sustainability, Routledge, London, 2022, pp. 35–50. 

Kothari, Ashish, et al. Kothari et al.: A Postdevelopment Dictionary. Tulika Books, 2019. 

“Sustainable Development Goals.” unfoundation.org. United Nations Foundation. Accessed April 25, 2023. https://unfoundation.org/what-we-do/issues/sustainable-development-goals/.

“The 5 Principles of Green Economy.” Green Economy Coalition. Green Economy Coalition. Accessed April 25, 2023. https://www.greeneconomycoalition.org/news-and-resources/the-5-principles-of-green-economy.