The international community is more than ever before faced with environmental issues that attract interdisciplinary attention: Deforestation, global warming, environmental pollution, species extinctions and desertification, among others. Man's development over the centuries has been such that he cannot but rely on the use of the environment. Economic, scientific and technological developments take place in space and time. The spatio-temporal nature of man's development generates concerns about human rights vis-à-vis the environment. Through the use of conceptual analysis the study critically examines the concepts 'environmental justice' and 'sustainable development'. The study establishes that meaningful development implies, inter alia, respect for the environment and respect for the rights man has over the environment. Global happiness, the study concludes, is attainable only in an atmosphere of inter-state understanding that sustaining the environment imply respecting rights to the environment. Thus, the study recommends, among others, that efforts at sustainable development be founded on environmental justice.
1. Introduction: Governance Technologies for Sustainable Development Good governance is incontrovertibly and inexorably pivotal to development. The ability to institute and maintain governance processes describable as good governance is key to that phenomenon technically referred to as sustainable development. Birthing sustainable development requires, among others, environmentally responsible and responsive leadership; which is the crux of sustainable governance. As noted by Guney (2017) for example, governance has an important and positive effect on sustainable development. Additionally, the applications of data sciences are penetrating the governance spaces of nation-states and creating an international society best conceptualized as global e-society. The emergent e-society throws up issues and challenges of environmental sustainability in developing nations: communities in most developing countries are fast becoming easy labels and referents for environmental abuses and injustices. Against the background of the facticity of the transformation of governance spaces by technology, it is imperative to explore the possibility of harnessing the instrumentality of governance technologies to engender a public service delivery framework for sustainable development in communities across developing nations. To this end the paper consists of five interrelated parts. Following the present introductory part, we shall in the second part analytically conceptualize digital governance and global e-society. The third part explores the interplay between digital governance, public service delivery and sustainable governance; an interplay which births for us the epistemological construct envirtizenship. In the fourth part we prospectively analyze the plausibility of leapfrogging digital governance for birthing a global public service delivery framework for sustainable governance in developing countries. The fifth and concluding part critically recommends, among others the formation of a global framework-E-Society for Sustainable Development (E-S4S)-as a desideratum for engendering clean public service delivery architecture in developing countries. 2. Digital Governance and E-Society: Conceptual Analysis A broad concept that means different things to different people (GDRC, 2019), governance for our purposes refers essentially to that function of a largely elected body of the state referred to as government. Governance is in general understood as the art of administration. With particular reference to the state, governance refers to the processes, manners and machineries for the administration of the state. As noted by UNESCAP for example, governance means the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Implied in the concept governance is the institutional frameworks deployed by the state for enabling peace and security, facilitating socioeconomic growth and preserving the natural habitat, among others.
The education landscape in the 21st Century is witnessing global paradigm shifts. Emergent pedagogic practices are redefining hitherto compartmentalized systems of teaching and learning. With the advances in technology and the attendant expansions of the frontiers of knowledge - through the processes of digitalization and globalization -, the hitherto intellectual boundaries between disciplines are increasingly becoming blurred and of little or no relevance to contemporary scholarship. Emergent 21st century scholarship in the developed countries is characterized by a continued break down of intellectual barriers or walls between academic disciplines. A critical look at the courses being offered by academic institutions in the developed countries reflect interdisciplinarity: Global Studies; History and Philosophy of Sustainable Development (HPSD); and, History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) among others. A similar look at the curricular of most departments of higher institutions in developing countries however reveals holding on to traditional departmentalizations that characterized scholarship prior the commencement of the 21st century. With particular reference to the discipline Global Studies, we shall in this paper analytically discuss the emergent phenomenon of interdisciplinary scholarship as a means of road-mapping and repositioning academic departments and disciplines for sustainable development in developing countries. The paper argumentatively recommends frameworks for reforming the largely monodisciplinary education service delivery system in developing countries. In particular, the paper analytically asserts that interdisciplinarity has the potentials of engendering imperative solutions to the myriad of developmental challenges confronting developing nations across the globe.
This paper attempts a critical review of the interplay between social media, sustainable peace and mediative dialogue. The paper is grounded in efforts to achieve Goal 16 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Peace Justice and Strong Institutions. It is the aim of Goal 16 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, give justice to all and make possible effective, responsible and all-encompassing institutions at all levels. The paper traced the history of the Sustainable Development Goals to the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment held in 1972 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are developed from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other earlier initiatives of the United Nations. Peace is singled out among these goals, and mediative dialogue is a means to achieving this goal. The advent of the Internet, among other technologies, has significantly changed the ways people communicate globally. Social media in particular is taking a significant role in the ways people, groups and nations resolve conflicts. Through philosophical reflections and qualitative analysis, the paper recommends a framework for deploying mediative dialogue, through social media, for sustainable peace. It is, therefore, concluded that harnessing the strength of the philosophies of the phenomena of social media, sustainable peace and mediative dialogue is a veritable tool for conflict resolution and also for actualizing the aspirations for global peace as inspired by Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
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