Reinvigorating the sustainable development research agenda: the role of the sustainable development goals (SDG)

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) contain a set of 17 measures to foster sustainable development across many areas. It offers a good opportunity to reinvigorate sustainable development research for two main reasons. First, it comprises many areas of SD research, which have become mainstream thanks to the UN SDGs. Second, the fact that the UN and its member countries have committed to attaining SDGs by 2030 has added a sense of urgency to the need to perform quality research on SD on the one hand, and reiterates the need to use the results of this research on the other. Even though the basic concept of sustainability goes back many centuries, it has only recently appeared on the international political agenda. This is partly due to an awakening of the fact that the human ecological pressure on the planet is still much larger than what nature can renew or compensate for. Based on this state of affairs, this paper presents an outline of the process leading to the agreement on the UN SDGs, and looks at some of the ecological aspects as a result of continued pressure of human activities on natural resources. Furthermore, a set of research needs is proposedalso based holistically on updated research trendsdiscussing the degree of urgency of some measures and explaining why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international sustainable development research efforts.

Benchmarking South East European Cities with the Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems Index

“…The best practices in D7 emphasize that cities can build capacities to be hubs of sustainable innovation. City partnerships may also give impetus to more solution-oriented sustainability research [180]. Table 10 provides the results of the SDEWES Index when the normalized values are aggregated based on eq.…”

O Que se Tem Pesquisado Sobre Sustentabilidade Empresarial e Sua Evidenciação?

“…Os ODSs são dezessete objetivos, desmembrados em cento e sessenta e nove metas, que são ainda mais ambiciosas por abarcarem mais dimensões do desenvolvimento sustentável (Campbell, 2017;Leal Filho, Azeiteiro, Alves, Pace, Mifsud, Brandli & Disterheft, 2017).…”

Applying the SDGs to cities: business as usual or new dawn?

“…Especially since the introduction of the SDGs, there is a growing body of literature that deals with various aspects, either regarding the evolution of the SDGs, historically but also forwardlooking [27,31,32], as to the degree to which the SDGs themselves, or the way they are structured, can facilitate the progression to a more sustainable development [27,28,[33][34][35][36], or aspects concerning the applicability of the SDGs and their associated indicators, on different levels.…”

“…The number of suggested SDG indicators makes it difficult meet the required demand on data.  Policy relevance in the local context and political prioritisation process [3,31,39,46,50]. Several of the aspects that the SDGs take up might need to be addressed through policies at other than the local level; political prioritisation can simplify, but also jeopardise successful implementation of the SDGs.…”

“…Several aspects might need to be addressed at different levels and with different actors, depending on the form of governance structure in each country, including who is responsible for monitoring the addressing of these aspects.  Need for capacity and skills in the academic and practitioners' field [3,31,46,54]. More knowledge and experiences needs to be gained to be able to use the SDGs in practice as a tool to achieve sustainable development.…”