Creating the Sustainable Development Goals

Seeking to highlight the input, excitement, hopes, and fears of people worldwide who were following and involved in the negotiation processes that created the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Roni Kay M. O’Dell gives deep insight into the participatory and inclusive practices during the negotiations. Thousands of people were actively engaged in the 2012-2015 United Nations (UN) processes that conceived of and created the 2030 Agenda and SDGs. Millions paid attention to the negotiations or filled out surveys about the world they wanted to see represented in a new set of development goals. Hundreds of civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders wrote policy briefs and organized to give input to the processes. Identifying the expansive nature of the negotiations and the complicated topics surrounding the SDGs, Roni Kay M. O’Dell shows how the processes gained input to create and negotiate an agenda for people and for the planet, as the first line of the 2030 Agenda asserts. But she also explores how the processes were exclusive or limited in global governance and inclusive decision-making. Non-governmental entities engaged in UN processes through feedback to open consultations, in mobilization by recognized and formalized NGOs and civil society organizations, through mechanisms such as the Major Groups, or through interventions in formal sessions and other activities. By covering the history of the participatory processes that created the 2030 Agenda, 17 SDGs and associated targets and indicators, this book adds to our understanding of how each SDG was articulated and why each was included as a global sustainable development goal. The SDGs are interdependent and represent the general trends in development thinking and practice around four communities and dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic, environmental, and peace and security. Further, the negotiation processes that created the 2030 Agenda and the 17 SDGs challenged how negotiation and goal-setting occurs at the UN. Roni Kay M. O’Dell offers insight and guidance as to how such processes can be improved to move forward in the twenty-first century as new goals and guiding frameworks for achieving sustainable development are negotiated and implemented.