Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions
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SPECIAL FEATURE: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Exploring Interactions among the Sustainable Development Goals: Case Studies from Three Continents
Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions Mary Menton1 · Carlos Larrea2 · Sara Latorre3 · Joan Martinez‑Alier4 · Mika Peck1 · Leah Temper5 · Mariana Walter4 Received: 14 January 2019 / Accepted: 19 February 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Through their synergies, trade-offs, and contradictions, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) have the potential to lead to environmental justices and injustices. Yet, environmental justice (EJ), and social justice more broadly, are not currently embedded within the language and spirit of the SDGs. We part from the premise that “many ‘environmental’ problems are, by their very nature, problems of justice” (Lele, Wiley Interdiscip Rev Water 4:e1224, 2017). We review progress in EJ frameworks in recent years, arguing for the need to move beyond a focus on the four principles of mainstream EJ (distribution, procedure, recognition, and capabilities) towards a more intersectional decolonial approach to environmental justice that recognises the indispensability of both humans and non-humans. EJ frameworks, and the SDGs should recognise power dynamics, complex interactions among injustices, and listens to the different ‘senses of justice’ and desires of theorists, activists, and other stakeholder from the Global South. We analyze how EJ frameworks are, or fail to be, incorporated in the SDGs with a focus on the food–water–health nexus (SDG2, 3, 6); climate-energy (SDG7, 13), conservation (SDG14, 15); and poverty and inequality (SDG1, 10). We call attention to the ‘elephant in the room’—the failure to go beyond GDP but instead include economic growth as a goal (SDG8). We argue that sustainable degrowth and intersectional decolonial environmental justices would create better conditions for the transformative changes needed to reach the broader aim of the SDGs: to leave no one behind. Keywords Injustice · Just sustainability · Environmental justice · Social justice · Intersectionality · Decoloniality
Introduction In 2015, the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN 2015) (Table 1). The Handled by Joseph Alcamo, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. * Mary Menton [email protected] 1
Sussex Sustainability Research Programme, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
2
Simón Bolívar Andean University, Quito, Ecuador
3
Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Quito, Ecuador
4
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
5
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
SDGs have been the subject of extensive research, political support, and civil society engagement but also critique. Some point out that they are a marked improvement on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), both in terms of the role of civil society in contributing to their creation and in transitioning from including the environment in only one goa
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