IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v31y2023i1p211-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rethinking the sustainable development goals: Learning with and from community‐led initiatives

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Henfrey
  • Giuseppe Feola
  • Gil Penha‐Lopes
  • Filka Sekulova
  • Ana Margarida Esteves

Abstract

This paper explores the actual and potential contributions of community‐led initiatives (CLIs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As examples of self‐determined practical action for sustainability and social justice, CLIs prefigure many of the intended outcomes of the SDGs. Existing evidence shows that CLIs are already contributing, at local scale, to almost all of the SDGs, and achieving particular success in bringing different goals into synergy. However, these achievements are based on ethics, guiding philosophies, issue framings, practical goals and ways of organising that differ significantly from those behind the formulation and delivery of the SDGs. Embracing those differences, and with them greater plurality and ongoing critical self‐reflection, would allow the SDGs to transcend certain self‐limiting contradictions, particularly concerning the role of economic growth. Such a shift in orientation is essential if the SDGs are to move from reinforcing to challenging the root causes of unsustainability and injustice.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Henfrey & Giuseppe Feola & Gil Penha‐Lopes & Filka Sekulova & Ana Margarida Esteves, 2023. "Rethinking the sustainable development goals: Learning with and from community‐led initiatives," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 211-222, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:31:y:2023:i:1:p:211-222
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.2384
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2384
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.2384?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amy Merritt & Tristan Stubbs, 2012. "Incentives to Promote Green Citizenship in UK Transition Towns," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 55(1), pages 96-103, March.
    2. Horn, Philipp & Grugel, Jean, 2018. "The SDGs in middle-income countries: Setting or serving domestic development agendas? Evidence from Ecuador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 73-84.
    3. Paul Wartman & Rene Van Acker & Ralph C. Martin, 2018. "Temperate Agroforestry: How Forest Garden Systems Combined with People-Based Ethics Can Transform Culture," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-14, June.
    4. Hanaček, Ksenija & Roy, Brototi & Avila, Sofia & Kallis, Giorgos, 2020. "Ecological economics and degrowth: Proposing a future research agenda from the margins," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    5. Robin Naidoo & Brendan Fisher, 2020. "Reset Sustainable Development Goals for a pandemic world," Nature, Nature, vol. 583(7815), pages 198-201, July.
    6. Amy Merritt & Tristan Stubbs, 2012. "Incentives to Promote Green Citizenship in UK Transition Towns," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 55(1), pages 96-103, March.
    7. Ulrich Graute, 2016. "Local Authorities Acting Globally for Sustainable Development," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(11), pages 1931-1942, November.
    8. Hillman, Joanne & Axon, Stephen & Morrissey, John, 2018. "Social enterprise as a potential niche innovation breakout for low carbon transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 445-456.
    9. Akbulut, Bengi & Demaria, Federico & Gerber, Julien-François & Martínez-Alier, Joan, 2019. "Who promotes sustainability? Five theses on the relationships between the degrowth and the environmental justice movements," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 1-1.
    10. Tilsted, Joachim Peter & Bjørn, Anders & Majeau-Bettez, Guillaume & Lund, Jens Friis, 2021. "Accounting matters: Revisiting claims of decoupling and genuine green growth in Nordic countries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    11. Carole-Anne Sénit & Frank Biermann & Agni Kalfagianni, 2017. "The Representativeness of Global Deliberation: A Critical Assessment of Civil Society Consultations for Sustainable Development," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8(1), pages 62-72, February.
    12. Pedro Macedo & Ana Huertas & Cristiano Bottone & Juan del Río & Nicola Hillary & Tommaso Brazzini & Julia M. Wittmayer & Gil Penha-Lopes, 2020. "Learnings from Local Collaborative Transformations: Setting a Basis for a Sustainability Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-24, January.
    13. Yiwen Zeng & Sean Maxwell & Rebecca K. Runting & Oscar Venter & James E. M. Watson & L. Roman Carrasco, 2020. "Environmental destruction not avoided with the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(10), pages 795-798, October.
    14. Jeffrey D. Sachs & Guido Schmidt-Traub & Mariana Mazzucato & Dirk Messner & Nebojsa Nakicenovic & Johan Rockström, 2019. "Six Transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 2(9), pages 805-814, September.
    15. Raissa Ulbrich & Claudia Pahl-Wostl, 2019. "The German Permaculture Community from a Community of Practice Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-21, February.
    16. Zahra Didarali & James Gambiza, 2019. "Permaculture: Challenges and Benefits in Improving Rural Livelihoods in South Africa and Zimbabwe," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-19, April.
    17. Alexandra Doernberg & Annette Piorr & Ingo Zasada & Dirk Wascher & Ulrich Schmutz, 2022. "Sustainability assessment of short food supply chains (SFSC): developing and testing a rapid assessment tool in one African and three European city regions," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(3), pages 885-904, September.
    18. Michel, Arnaud & Hudon, Marek, 2015. "Community currencies and sustainable development: A systematic review," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 160-171.
    19. Cumming, Tracey L. & Shackleton, Ross T. & Förster, Johannes & Dini, John & Khan, Ahmed & Gumula, Mpho & Kubiszewski, Ida, 2017. "Achieving the national development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through investment in ecological infrastructure: A case study of South Africa," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(PB), pages 253-260.
    20. Audley Genus & Marfuga Iskandarova & Chris Warburton Brown, 2021. "Institutional entrepreneurship and permaculture: A practice theory perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 1454-1467, March.
    21. Jason Hickel, 2019. "The contradiction of the sustainable development goals: Growth versus ecology on a finite planet," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 873-884, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yiwen Zeng & Rebecca K. Runting & James E. M. Watson & Luis Roman Carrasco, 2022. "Telecoupled environmental impacts are an obstacle to meeting the sustainable development goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 76-82, February.
    2. Ramcilovic-Suominen, Sabaheta & Kröger, Markus & Dressler, Wolfram, 2022. "From pro-growth and planetary limits to degrowth and decoloniality: An emerging bioeconomy policy and research agenda," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    3. Robson Silva Sø Rocha, 2022. "Degrowth in Practice: Developing an Ecological Habitus within Permaculture Entrepreneurship," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-23, July.
    4. Hans Eickhoff, 2024. "The appeal of the circular economy revisited: on track for transformative change or enabler of moral licensing?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, December.
    5. Frank Biermann & Thomas Hickmann & Carole-Anne Sénit & Marianne Beisheim & Steven Bernstein & Pamela Chasek & Leonie Grob & Rakhyun E. Kim & Louis J. Kotzé & Måns Nilsson & Andrea Ordóñez Llanos & Chu, 2022. "Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 5(9), pages 795-800, September.
    6. Hametner, Markus, 2022. "Economics without ecology: How the SDGs fail to align socioeconomic development with environmental sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    7. Mehmet Çağlar & Cem Gürler, 2022. "Sustainable Development Goals: A cluster analysis of worldwide countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 8593-8624, June.
    8. Jan Anton van Zanten & Rob van Tulder, 2020. "Beyond COVID-19: Applying “SDG logics” for resilient transformations," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 3(4), pages 451-464, December.
    9. Gräbner-Radkowitsch, Claudius & Strunk, Birte, 2023. "Degrowth and the Global South: The twin problem of global dependencies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    10. Gaël Mariani & Fabien Moullec & Trisha B Atwood & Beverley Clarkson & Richard T Conant & Leanne Cullen-Unsworth & Bronson Griscom & Julian Gutt & Jennifer Howard & Dorte Krause- Jensen & Sara M Leavit, 2024. "Co-benefits and trade-offs between Natural Climate Solutions and Sustainable Development Goals," Post-Print hal-04756965, HAL.
    11. Dóci, Gabriella & Vasileiadou, Eleftheria, 2015. "“Let׳s do it ourselves” Individual motivations for investing in renewables at community level," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 41-50.
    12. Gerald Taylor Aiken, 2017. "The politics of community: Togetherness, transition and post-politics," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(10), pages 2383-2401, October.
    13. Corvellec, Hervé & Paulsson, Alexander, 2023. "Resource shifting: Resourcification and de-resourcification for degrowth," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    14. Dongni Han & Deyong Yu & Jiangxiao Qiu, 2023. "Assessing coupling interactions in a safe and just operating space for regional sustainability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    15. Hennen, Sonja, 2022. "Concepts of justice in the degrowth debate," IPE Working Papers 179/2022, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    16. Flevy Lasrado & Norhayati Zakaria, 2020. "Go green! Exploring the organizational factors that influence self-initiated green behavior in the United Arab Emirates," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 823-850, September.
    17. Jem Bendell, 2022. "Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-19, July.
    18. Guillaume Lafortune & Grayson Fuller & Guido Schmidt-Traub & Christian Kroll, 2020. "How Is Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals Measured? Comparing Four Approaches for the EU," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-24, September.
    19. Ernestina Rubio-Mozos & Fernando E. García-Muiña & Laura Fuentes-Moraleda, 2020. "Sustainable Strategic Management Model for Hotel Companies: A Multi-Stakeholder Proposal to “Walk the Talk” toward SDGs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-25, October.
    20. Kaitlyn Spangler & Roslynn Brain McCann & Rafter Sass Ferguson, 2021. "(Re-)Defining Permaculture: Perspectives of Permaculture Teachers and Practitioners across the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-12, May.

    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:31:y:2023:i:1:p:211-222. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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.