Reinvigorating the sustainable development research agenda: the role of the sustainable development goals (SDG)

TLDR

The UN Sustainable Development Goals comprise 17 measures to promote sustainable development, a concept that has only recently entered the international political agenda due to the recognition that human ecological pressure exceeds nature’s capacity to renew. This paper seeks to reinvigorate sustainable development research by outlining the process that led to the SDGs, examining ecological impacts of ongoing human activity, and proposing research priorities that reflect current trends and urgency. The authors describe the agreement process for the SDGs, analyze ecological consequences of continued human pressure on natural resources, and recommend research needs based on updated trends and the urgency of specific measures. The SDGs have brought many sustainable development research areas into the mainstream, and the 2030 commitment by UN member states has heightened the urgency for high‑quality research and the application of its findings.

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) contain a set of 17 measures to foster sustainable development across many areas. It offers a good opportunity to reinvigorate sustainable development research for two main reasons. First, it comprises many areas of SD research, which have become mainstream thanks to the UN SDGs. Second, the fact that the UN and its member countries have committed to attaining SDGs by 2030 has added a sense of urgency to the need to perform quality research on SD on the one hand, and reiterates the need to use the results of this research on the other. Even though the basic concept of sustainability goes back many centuries, it has only recently appeared on the international political agenda. This is partly due to an awakening of the fact that the human ecological pressure on the planet is still much larger than what nature can renew or compensate for. Based on this state of affairs, this paper presents an outline of the process leading to the agreement on the UN SDGs, and looks at some of the ecological aspects as a result of continued pressure of human activities on natural resources. Furthermore, a set of research needs is proposed – also based holistically on updated research trends – discussing the degree of urgency of some measures and explaining why the UN SDGs need to be accorded greater priority in international sustainable development research efforts.