The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Transformative Change through the Sustainable Development Goals?

Sabine Weiland, Thomas Hickmann, Markus Lederer, Jens Marquardt and Sandra Schwindenhammer
Additional contact information
Sabine Weiland: European School of Political and Social Sciences, Lille Catholic University, France
Thomas Hickmann: Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Markus Lederer: Institute of Political Science, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany
Jens Marquardt: Institute of Political Science, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany
Sandra Schwindenhammer: Department of Political Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany

Politics and Governance, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 90-95

Abstract: The 2030 Agenda of the United Nations comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 sub-targets which serve as a global reference point for the transition to sustainability. The agenda acknowledges that different issues such as poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, environmental degradation, among others, are intertwined and can therefore only be addressed together. Implementing the SDGs as an ‘indivisible whole’ represents the actual litmus test for the success of the 2030 Agenda. The main challenge is accomplishing a more integrated approach to sustainable development that encompasses new governance frameworks for enabling and managing systemic transformations. This thematic issue addresses the question whether and how the SDGs set off processes of societal transformation, for which cooperation between state and non-state actors at all political levels (global, regional, national, sub-national), in different societal spheres (politics, society, and economy), and across various sectors (energy, transportation, food, etc.) are indispensable. In this editorial, we first introduce the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs by providing an overview of the architecture of the agenda and the key challenges of the current implementation phase. In a second step, we present the eleven contributions that make up the thematic issue clustering them around three themes: integration, governance challenges, and implementation.

Keywords: 2030 Agenda; governance; implementation; integration; Sustainable Development Goals; sustainability; transformation; transition; United Nations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/4191 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v9:y:2021:i:1:p:90-95

DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i1.4191

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().