Striving for the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): what will it take?

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) aim to develop healthy societies aligned with collective well-being. Although commendable efforts have been made, there has been a paucity of coordination and integration across sectors. While progress towards these goals has made a marked d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Discover sustainability 2021-12, Vol.2 (1), p.1-14, Article 20
Main Authors: Saxena, Anurag, Ramaswamy, Meghna, Beale, Jon, Marciniuk, Darcy, Smith, Preston
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil society
Collaboration
Developing countries
Earth and Environmental Science
Economic growth
Environment
Inequality
LDCs
Leadership
Optimism
Perspective
Sustainable Development
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Summary:The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) aim to develop healthy societies aligned with collective well-being. Although commendable efforts have been made, there has been a paucity of coordination and integration across sectors. While progress towards these goals has made a marked difference in peoples’ lives, it has been slow, episodic, and geographically isolated. This article dissects the challenges and opportunities and addresses the interplay between conceptualization, implementation, and evaluation. We suggest that philosophic, strategic, and operational alignment between and strategic attention to transformative learning for education and organizational learning, leadership (that involves moral courage, judicious use of power and narratives, creating a sense of belonging, and adopting an integrated and dialectic approach) and robust partnerships across public, private and plural (civil society) sectors would increase the likelihood of success and sustainability beyond 2030. A dialectic approach integrating outcomes with SDGs’ inspirational nature to guide the discourse would allow for emergence.
ISSN:2662-9984
2662-9984
DOI:10.1007/s43621-021-00029-8