IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v25y2017i4p311-321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Hot Air or Comprehensive Progress? A Critical Assessment of the SDGs

Author

Listed:
  • Joachim H. Spangenberg

Abstract

Since the SDGs have been adopted, the focus of the policy, civil society and academic debate is on how to implement ‘the SDGs’. However, if there are inherent contradictions, it will be impossible to implement all goals, and a choice has to be made. This paper analyses the SDGs regarding their coherence and its impacts on their implementation. It does so by using the DPSIR heuristic looking at driving forces, pressures, states, impacts and responses of sustainability challenges. The opportunities for success are assessed by a closer look at the agency mentioned in the SDG–Agenda 2030 text. The SDGs are found to be weak on agency, with limited obligations to governments and none to business or consumers. They focus on state and impact, neglecting the pressures and supporting counterproductive drivers. In conclusion, either the positive targets will not be realized, or the means of implementation must be upgraded significantly. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Suggested Citation

  • Joachim H. Spangenberg, 2017. "Hot Air or Comprehensive Progress? A Critical Assessment of the SDGs," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(4), pages 311-321, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:25:y:2017:i:4:p:311-321
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ryan Wong & Jeroen van der Heijden, 2022. "How does symbolic commitment strengthen the resilience of sustainability institutions? Exploring the role of bureaucrats in Germany, Finland, and the UK," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 10-22, February.
    2. Janina Grabs & Rachael D. Garrett, 2023. "Goal-Based Private Sustainability Governance and Its Paradoxes in the Indonesian Palm Oil Sector," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 188(3), pages 467-507, December.
    3. Yuqing Xu & Yu Chen & Min Cao & Lijiao Chang & Yuying Bai & Yue Li & Yaqi Guo, 2023. "Forecasting Future Development under the Interactions among Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-11, November.
    4. Mariia Kostetckaia & Markus Hametner, 2022. "How Sustainable Development Goals interlinkages influence European Union countries’ progress towards the 2030 Agenda," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 916-926, October.
    5. Weber, Heloise & Weber, Martin, 2020. "When means of implementation meet Ecological Modernization Theory: A critical frame for thinking about the Sustainable Development Goals initiative," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    6. Xuantong Wang & James Hopeward & Ilcheong Yi & Mark W. McElroy & Paul C. Sutton, 2022. "Supporting the Sustainable Development Goals: A context sensitive indicator for sustainable use of water at the facility level," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 1184-1199, October.
    7. Señoret, Andrés & Ramirez, Maria Inés & Rehner, Johannes, 2022. "Employment and sustainability: The relation between precarious work and spatial inequality in the neoliberal city," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    8. Cameron Allen & Graciela Metternicht & Thomas Wiedmann, 2021. "Priorities for science to support national implementation of the sustainable development goals: A review of progress and gaps," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(4), pages 635-652, July.
    9. Hametner, Markus, 2022. "Economics without ecology: How the SDGs fail to align socioeconomic development with environmental sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    10. Leandro Pereira & Rita Carvalho & Álvaro Dias & Renato Costa & Nelson António, 2021. "How Does Sustainability Affect Consumer Choices in the Fashion Industry?," Resources, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-30, April.
    11. Maia, Rodrigo Gomes Távora & Garcia, Katia Cristina, 2023. "What they say, what they do and how they do it: An evaluation of the energy transition and GHG emissions of electricity companies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    12. Sarah Cummings & Anastasia‐Alithia Seferiadis & Leah de Haan, 2020. "Getting down to business? Critical discourse analysis of perspectives on the private sector in sustainable development," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 759-771, July.
    13. Thomas Hickmann & Frank Biermann & Matteo Spinazzola & Charlotte Ballard & Maya Bogers & Oana Forestier & Agni Kalfagianni & Rakhyun E. Kim & Francesco S. Montesano & Tom Peek & Carole‐Anne Sénit & Me, 2023. "Success factors of global goal‐setting for sustainable development: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(3), pages 1214-1225, June.
    14. Wayne Nelles & Supawan Visetnoi & Carl Middleton & Thita Orn-in, 2022. "Higher education institutions, SDG2 and agri-food sustainability: lessons from Chulalongkorn University and Thailand," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(9), pages 10975-10996, September.
    15. Rosa Puertas & Luisa Marti, 2023. "Regional analysis of the sustainable development of two Mediterranean countries: Spain and Italy," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(2), pages 797-811, April.
    16. Matti Ylönen & Anna Salmivaara, 2021. "Policy coherence across Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals: Lessons from Finland," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(5), pages 829-847, September.
    17. Chiara Mio & Silvia Panfilo & Benedetta Blundo, 2020. "Sustainable development goals and the strategic role of business: A systematic literature review," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 3220-3245, December.
    18. Eduardo Ordonez‐Ponce & David Talbot, 2023. "Multinational enterprises' sustainability practices and focus on developing countries: Contributions and unexpected results of SDG implementation," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 201-232, March.
    19. Rita Nerland & Heidi Rapp Nilsen & Bjørn Andersen, 2023. "Biosphere‐based sustainability in local governments: Sustainable development goal interactions and indicators for policymaking," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 39-55, February.
    20. Lucendo-Monedero, Ángel Luis & Ruiz-Rodríguez, Francisca & González-Relaño, Reyes, 2023. "The information society and socio-economic sustainability in european regions. Spatio-temporal changes between 2011 and 2020," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    21. Milind Kumar Jha & K. Rangarajan, 2020. "The approach of Indian corporates towards sustainable development: An exploration using sustainable development goals based model," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(5), pages 1019-1032, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:25:y:2017:i:4:p:311-321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.