When Things Fall Apart

Author(s):  
Christopher Burr Jones

The chapter addresses the challenges facing first responders and public administrators due to accelerated warming, global weirding, and the limits to complexity. Similarly, these same challenges are also likely to have an impact on the ability of governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations to implement and realize the sustainable development goals and their 169 targets. The chapter focuses on the state of critical infrastructure, primarily in the USA, and the maintenance and sustainability of the physical systems of energy distribution, transportation, communication, and other basic services that support economic development and social systems. The chapter posits the need to explore these themes through the lens of futures studies and the need to envision and create preferred futures.

Author(s):  
Charlotte Bunch

This chapter outlines the quest for women’s equality, empowerment, and human rights through the United Nations from its founding to the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. It considers the on-going dilemma in this work of whether, and when, to pursue women’s equality through separate entities and through gender mainstreaming. Describing the evolution of the major UN women-specific institutions, conferences, and standard-setting documents, and the critical role of civil society—especially women’s non-governmental organizations—the chapter argues that these have driven this agenda. Finally, it analyses the progress of gender integration and women’s advancement on UN agendas in the areas of development; health and sexual rights; human rights; and peace and security.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Floyd Morris

In 2019, the University of the West Indies Centre for Disability Studies (UWICDS) released the results of the first Regional Disability Index (RDI). The RDI was developed with the primary aim to track and rank countries within the Caribbean in terms of their efforts to implement the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and by extension, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The RDI used a quantitative methodological framework employing a survey among government and non-governmental organizations catering to persons with disabilities in the Anglophone Caribbean to capture the data. In this paper, this researcher conducts an assessment of the major findings of the RDI in the context of building resilience among persons with disabilities in certain fundamental areas of Caribbean life. Findings relating to legislative protection, education, employment, public transportation, health care, and access to information are highlighted. The RDI, among other things, revealed that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is the top country in the Anglophone Caribbean in terms of their efforts to implement programmes and policies for persons with disabilities. We compare and contrast the findings regionally to that which is taking place in the global landscape for persons with disabilities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 940 (1) ◽  
pp. 012067
Author(s):  
A Lelechenko ◽  
O Lebedinska ◽  
S Somin ◽  
T Derun ◽  
M Ivanisiva

Abstract The purpose of the article is to present empirical research on the study of the axiology of the phenomenon of “sustainable government administration”, the identification of its role and place in the system of value priorities for the development of modern human civilization, as well as the justification of new approaches to international cooperation towards the achievement of global Sustainable Development Goals. A new scientific term has been formulated and a separate scientific and practical direction in the field of science “State administration” - “sustainable government administration”, its subject, object, exclusive features, and methods of implementation have been determined. The author’s model of a criterion comparative analysis of state governance of sustainable development, public administration sustainable development and sustainable government administration features is proposed. Particular attention is paid to the issue of enhancing Ukraine’s participation in the activities of international governmental and non-governmental organizations in the field of environmental safety. The article is a logical continuation of previous scientific studies of the author’s team. The analysis allows to assume that in the case of the introduction of state regulation of sustainable development at the global, national and regional levels, has every reason to achieve a significant part of the Sustainable Development Goals without waiting for 2030.


2021 ◽  
pp. 149-166
Author(s):  
John S. Dryzek

Sustainable development became the dominant discourse in global environmental affairs in the 1980s, spurred by the landmark Brundtland report to the United Nations, and remains widely popular, embodied for example in the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by an assembly of all the world’s countries in 2015. Sustainable development combines ecological protection, economic growth, social justice, and intergenerational equity, which can be sought globally and in perpetuity. “Green growth” becomes possible, while ecological limits and boundaries fade into the background. However, it is necessary for a collective effort that involves governments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations, and citizens to make this happen. Sustainable development is an integrating discourse that covers local and global environmental issues and a host of economic and development concerns. Beyond this shared discourse, different actors (such as corporations and environmentalists) ascribe different means to the idea. Despite its popularity as a discourse, sustainable development has not actually been achieved anywhere.


Author(s):  
Chris G. Pope ◽  
Meng Ji ◽  
Xuemei Bai

The chapter argues that whether or not the world is successful in attaining sustainability, political systems are in a process of epoch-defining change as a result of the unsustainable demands of our social systems. This chapter theorizes a framework for analyzing the political “translation” of sustainability norms within national polities. Translation, in this sense, denotes the political reinterpretation of sustainable development as well as the national capacities and contexts which impact how sustainability agendas can be instrumentalized. This requires an examination into the political architecture of a national polity, the norms that inform a political process, socioecological contexts, the main communicative channels involved in the dissemination of political discourse and other key structures and agencies, and the kinds of approaches toward sustainability that inform the political process. This framework aims to draw attention to the ways in which global economic, political, and social systems are adapting and transforming as a result of unsustainability and to further understanding of the effectiveness of globally diffused sustainability norms in directing that change.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Liu ◽  
Jinhang Xu ◽  
Yiming Wei ◽  
Assem Abu Hatab ◽  
Jing Lan

Abstract There is a possibility that worldwide expenditures in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects could fall much further in 2017 and 2018. This may jeopardize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris climate change agreement. Lack of access to private financing slows the development of green initiatives. Now that sustainable energy isn't about science and technology, it's all about getting financing. Therefore, recent study intended to investigate the role of green financing for maximum renewable electricity generation and efficiency of energy in United States of America (USA). Our study suggested to value environmental initiatives, like other infrastructure initiatives, for greater electricity generation and energy efficiency in USA. Such infrastructural projects need long-term financing and capital-intensiveness. Our findings suggest that to sustain growth, development, and energy poverty reduction, around $26 trillion would be required, in terms of green financing, in the USA alone by the year 2030 to enhance energy efficiency. To achieve energy sustainability goals in USA, recent research suggested some policy implication considering the post COVID-19 time. If suggested policy implications are implemented successfully there are chances that green financing would make energy generation and energy efficiency as effective.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Matheson

© 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) needs to become real and impactful, taking a “whole systems” perspective on levers for systems change. This article reviews what we have learned over the past century about the large-scale outcome of health inequality, and what we know about the behaviour of complex social systems. This combined knowledge provides lessons on the nature of inequality and what effective action on our big goals, like the SDGs, might look like. It argues that economic theories and positivist social theories which have dominated the last 150 years have largely excluded the nature of human connections to each other, and the environment. This exclusion of intimacy has legitimatised arguments that only value-free economic processes matter for macro human systems, and only abstract measurement constitutes valuable social science. Theories of complex systems provide an alternative perspective. One where health inequality is viewed as emergent, and causes are systemic and compounding. Action therefore needs to be intensely local, with power relationships key to transformation. This requires conscious and difficult intervention on the intolerable accumulation of resources; improved reciprocity between social groups; and reversal of system flows, which at present ebb away from the local and those already disadvantaged.


Author(s):  
Merdassa Feven Tariku

The article is devoted to the features of informal settlement in Addis Ababa and the role of governmental and non-governmental organizations and public participation in the sustainable development of informal settlements. The purpose of the article is to identify the main types and characteristics of informal settlements and to reveal the factors that hinder the success of programs for updating informal settlements in the city. The research methods were the analysis and generalization of domestic and foreign literature on this research problem. The main conclusion of this study is that the principles of folk architecture are integral components of solutions for the sustainable development of informal settlements.


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