Fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals: On a Quest for a Sustainable World (Law, Ethics and Governance)

This book contains assessment of the progress, or the lack of it, in implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through review of the assessments and of case studies, readers can draw lessons from the actions that could work to positively address the goals. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is designed to catalyze action in critical areas of importance to humanity and the planet. The effort to implement the SDGs, however, demands a sense of urgency in the face of environmental degradation, climate change, emerging conflicts, and growing inequality, among a number of other socio-economic problems. Five years after the launch of the 2030 Agenda, this book takes stock of how far the world has come and how we can position ourselves to achieve the global targets. The book is one of the first to assess how the implementation is impeded by the onset of COVID-19. It contains a special chapter on COVID-19 and the SDGs, while many thematic chapters on different SDGs also assess how COVID-19 adversely affects implementation, and what measures could be taken to minimize the adverse effects. This publication thus provides a fresh look at implementation of the SDGs highlighting impactful and creative actions that go beyond the business-as-usual development efforts. The volume reinforces this analysis with expert recommendations on how to support implementation efforts and achieve the SDGs through international and national strategies and the involvement of both the public and private sectors. The result is an indispensable textual tool for policy makers, academia, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as the public, as we march toward the 2030 deadline. Review "This impressive compendium adds refreshingly new perspectives on the contemporary discourse on SDGs and offers a rigorous assessment of best practices and challenges in their implementation, suggesting course-correction and review, based on lessons from diverse socio-cultural and geographical contexts. The rich empirical analysis is buttressed by a robust ethical framework. The editors do a stellar job of breathing normative life into it, transcending the conventional targets-indicators matrix and the moribund binaries of economic growth vs. environmental protection, infusing it with the ‘leave no one behind’ transformative impulse. The book throws its substantial intellectual weight behind the idea that building resilient societies requires an integrative vision and a sensitivity to complexity. The interconnectedness and linkages between the SDGs and the need to build synergy is a persistent leitmotif. The bold call for a rescript of the current multilateral system to render it more responsive to subaltern aspirations is evocative and compelling. The book’s rich inter-disciplinary non-linearity and its fidelity to the idea of ownership by civil society - not just its messianic leaders - lends it a refreshing vitality. This volume is an eloquent exhortation to governments to buck up, and equally an invitation to citizens to immerse themselves in an extraordinary enterprise, an exciting work-in-progress, to usher in a just and humane world, that is waiting to be born. The volume succeeds in making despair unconvincing and hope practical. An absolute ‘must read’!" Meenakshi Gopinath "This admirable book by Popovski, Kakar and Robinson, makes the ‘COVID-damage assessment’, but also finds opportunities to recover, build back green and fast, and fulfil the 2030 Agenda. The philosophical underpinnings of the idea of ‘sustainable development’, now half a century long since Stockholm 1972, resonates through the volume as does the commitment to ‘greater community of life’. The book points out growing inequalities and conflicts both within and between societies as the main cause of human suffering, and the need for a nexus between peace and development to reach the goals. It rei