Richard E Kim
Biographic Data
| ID | 748685 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard E Kim |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard E |
| FAMILY NAME | Kim |
| SIGNATURE | KIM R E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1308-6849 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 389 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Harnessing legal system complexity for radical shifts to sustainability
Pollution or protection? The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s advisory opinion on climate change and its relevance for marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR)
In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) published an advisory opinion on climate change. Many expected that this decision would help to clarify the balance between the paradigms of ocean protection and utilisation in the context of climate change. This is especially relevant for governing emerging marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approaches being proposed to increase the carbon drawdown potential of the ocean to…
Dataset development in earth system governance: Learnings, stakes, and pathways for impact
The construction and use of datasets have become an important practice in Earth system governance research. By systematically cataloguing various outcomes, policy issues, actors, sites, and processes, datasets enhance the reliability, transparency, and replicability of research. Yet, despite growing interest, efforts to share data, integrate datasets, and develop common standards remain fragmented. This Perspective surveys various scholarly effor…
Indigenous peoples and renewable energy: Impacts, contestations, and collective action
Although renewable energy (RE) transitions offer pathways to sustainability, their implementation often exacerbates existing injustices, particularly for indigenous communities. This paper examines indigenous peoples' complex and evolving relationship with RE transitions through a systematic review of 87 peer-reviewed articles. It identifies three key thematic areas:(1) the impacts of RE transitions on indigenous communities; (2) indigenous conte…
Too Complex to Fail: The Stability of Global Environmental Governance Beyond Hegemony
The recent US disengagement from global governance has revived concerns—first theorized in the 1970s and 1980s—about the vulnerability of international institutions to hegemonic decline. While these concerns appear valid in many issue areas, the global environmental regime complex presents a notable exception. Unlike more centralized global governance structures, it has a high degree of complexity and this characteristic enhances its capacity to …
Clustering as a Solution to Environmental Problem Shifting? The Case of the Basel–Rotterdam–Stockholm Synergies Process
Clustering has been proposed as a strategy to enhance the problem-solving effectiveness of international environmental regimes. But does it fulfill this promise? We explore this question by assessing whether clustering reduces problem shifting—when solving one environmental issue inadvertently creates new problems. We assess the potential of clustering to preempt such dynamics by fostering more coherent, crosscutting governance that accounts for …
The potential negative impact of the UNFCCC: An analysis of sectoral, geographical, and temporal problem shifts from climate policies and measures in 25 industrialized countries
Climate mitigation measures have been accompanying problem-shifts since 1992. • We provide a novel framework to identify problem-shifts. • We draw on 182 national communications from 25 developed countries. • Problem-shifts create 1,749 impacts on 8 sectors, including in the Global South. • Temporal impact entails reduced solution space in the future. Climate mitigation policies and measures, while well-intentioned, can generate unintended conseq…
The likely impact of the BBNJ Agreement on the architecture of ocean governance
In June 2023, governments agreed to a new treaty on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). Unlike most other multilateral environmental agreements that typically emerge in response to newly identified transboundary environmental issues, the BBNJ Agreement steps into an already crowded institutional landscape as a global authority with broad objectives. The challenge facing…
The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on global policies on sustainable consumption and production
While some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) rely on the support of established international organizations and regimes, others lack strong institutions in their governance areas. This raises the question of whether the SDGs can contribute to strengthening these less institutionalized areas in global governance, which would make these goals important factors in advancing international institutionalization. We study this question with…
Three Pathways to Nonuse Agreement(s) on Solar Geoengineering
Recent years have seen increasing calls by a few scientists, largely from the Global North, to explore “solar geoengineering,” a set of speculative technologies that would reflect parts of incoming sunlight back into space and, if deployed at planetary scale, have an average cooling effect. Numerous concerns about the development of such speculative technologies include the many ecological risks and uncertainties as well as unresolved questions o…
Towards a Non-Use Regime on Solar Geoengineering: Lessons from International Law and Governance
In recent years, some scientists have called for research into and potential development of 'solar geoengineering' technologies as an option to counter global warming. Solar geoengineering refers to a set of speculative techniques to reflect some incoming sunlight back into space, for example, by continuously spraying reflective sulphur aerosols into the stratosphere over several generations. Because of the significant ecological, social, and pol…
Towards earth-space governance in a multi-planetary era
The recent surge of private enterprise-led space activities is driving what is dubbed the New Space revolution. SpaceX as a frontrunner is working towards colonizing Mars by 2050, with the goal of transforming humans into a multi-planetary species. These developments and the imaginaries they generate are reshaping the discourse on planetary sustainability, where celestial bodies like Mars are seen as a solution to the challenges facing our Earth.…
The SDGs as integrating force in global governance? Challenges and opportunities
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an “integrated and indivisible” set of policy objectives with the aim, among others, to unite the diverse and vast system of international organizations under one shared normative agenda. And yet, have these SDGs really become such an integrative force in global governance? Our conclusion here is negative, and our research suggests that the SDGs have not lived up to …
Augment the SDG indicator framework
The 231 indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are crucial for measuring progress on 169 targets. But the seemingly large number of indicators and the associated cost of monitoring have led to calls for streamlining. Here I present an alternative perspective on the SDG indicators by paying due regard to their performativity, or ability to shape outcomes. By drawing on the literature on conditions under which indicators have uninte…
The UN Regional Commissions as Orchestrators for the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals ( SDG s). These SDG s are not legally binding and lack strict enforcement mechanisms. International organizations that seek to implement these goals therefore rely on soft tools to influence governments and other actors, which is often described as “orchestration.” This article focuses on regional governance and studies the yet unexplored role of the five UN Regional Co…
Earth steward: Will Steffen's contributions to Earth System Science, governance and law
How the World Bank Engages with the Sustainable Development Goal on Reducing Inequalities: A Case of Organizational Jiu-Jitsu
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to mobilize various actors, including international organizations, for a global transformation toward sustainability. The expectation was that international organizations would assist in the implementation of the goals and encourage, support, or coordinate others to work toward their achievement. But have international organizations over the last 8 years changed …
Making development legible to capital: The promise and limits of 'innovative' debt financing for the Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia
Aligning private finance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promises to close the multi-trillion-dollar SDG 'financing gap' while unlocking trillions more in market opportunities. This article explores the processes mobilised for this alignment in Indonesia, an emerging country exemplified as a site where such opportunities are profuse. We do so through assessing modalities of planning, prototyping and building project pipelines design…
International organisations as ‘custodians’ of the sustainable development goals? Fragmentation and coordination in sustainability governance
It is widely assumed that the fragmentation of global governance can affect coordination efforts among international institutions and organisations. Yet, the precise relationship between the fragmentation of global governance and the extent to which international organisations coordinate their activities remains underexplored. In this article, we offer new empirical evidence derived from the so‐called custodianship arrangements in which numerous …
Towards planetary nexus governance in the Anthropocene: An earth system law perspective
Nexus governance recognises that sustainability concerns such as water, energy, and food security are interlinked and provides an alternative to fragmented governance. Although it has been applied mostly in the domestic context, the need for nexus governance is also apparent at a planetary scale, as highlighted by interacting planetary boundaries, global telecoupling, and global tipping cascades. However, international environmental law is unable…
The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals: Transforming Governance Through Global Goals
Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN system and the policies of countries in the Global North and Global South; on…
The CBD Post‐2020 biodiversity framework: People's place within the rest of nature
Recognizing two decades of failure to achieve global goals and targets, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are in the final phase of negotiating a Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for the conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing of biodiversity. The framework attempts to set out pathways, goals and targets for the next decade to achieve positive biodiversity change. This perspective intends to help that framework se…
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Sustainable Development Goals fail to advance policy integration: A large-n text analysis of 159 international organizations
While most of today’s global challenges are deeply interconnected, international organizations often operate in silos. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, have been advanced as a new agenda to break up these silos and to better integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Yet little is known about whether the SDGs had any effects in advancing policy integration. To investigate this, we conduc…
Success factors of global goal‐setting for sustainable development: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were an important precursor to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, identifying the conditions that made the MDGs successful enhances our understanding of global goal‐setting and informs the global endeavour to achieve the SDGs. Drawing on a comprehensive review of 316 articles published between 2009 and 2018, we identify six factors that have enabled or hindered MDG implementation. Our analysis…
New directions in earth system governance research
The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant a…
Global governance by goal-setting: The novel approach of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Cherry‐picking the Sustainable Development Goals: Goal prioritization by national governments and implications for global governance
The member states of the United Nations collectively agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as equally important global objectives. Yet the same states seem to prioritize certain SDGs in national implementation. Such cherry‐picking defies the “integrated and indivisible” nature of the SDGs, and could negatively impact overall progress on sustainable development globally. Which SDGs receive more attention than the others in national po…
The emergent network structure of the multilateral environmental agreement system
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements
Initiated in 2002, the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) catalogs the texts, memberships, and design features of over 3,000 multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements. Using IEADB data, we create a comprehensive review of the evolution of international environmental law, including how the number, subjects, and state memberships in IEAs have changed over time. By providing IEA texts, the IEADB helps scholars identif…
International environmental law as a complex adaptive system
The (anti-)politics of policy coherence for sustainable development in the Netherlands: Logic, method, effects
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed in 2015, chart an integrated and universal policy agenda to be realised by 2030. To this end, policy coherence for sustainable development is embedded in the SDGs as both an end in itself and a means through which to ensure that the fulfilment of some goals does not come at the expense of others. Yet, as a transformative process and outcome, policy coherence, as articulated in the SDGs, is narrowly…
The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on a network of 276 international organizations
Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. Enhancing inter-organizational coordination and cooperation is thus often recognized as an important reform challenge in global sustainability governance. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2015, thus explicitly aim at advancing policy coherence and ins…
International Environmental Law in the Anthropocene: Towards a Purposive System of Multilateral Environmental Agreements
Our point of analytical departure is that the state of the global environment is deteriorating despite the accumulating body of international environmental law. By drawing on the recent Earth system science concept of interlinked planetary boundaries, this article makes a case for a goal-oriented, purposive system of multilateral environmental agreements. The notion of 'goal' is used here to mean a single, legally binding, superior norm - agrundn…
Making development legible to capital: The promise and limits of 'innovative' debt financing for the Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia
Aligning private finance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promises to close the multi-trillion-dollar SDG 'financing gap' while unlocking trillions more in market opportunities. This article explores the processes mobilised for this alignment in Indonesia, an emerging country exemplified as a site where such opportunities are profuse. We do so through assessing modalities of planning, prototyping and building project pipelines design…
Earth system law: Exploring new frontiers in legal science
The Anthropocene requires of us to rethink global governance challenges and effective responses with a more holistic understanding of the earth system as a single intertwined social-ecological system. Law, in particular, will have to embrace such a holistic earth system perspective in order to deal more effectively with the Anthropocene's predicaments. While a growing number of scholars have tried to reimagine law and legal scholarship in a more …
Earth system law: The juridical dimensions of earth system governance
While the focus of earth system governance is on the human-social aspects of Earth system changes, law has played a peripheral part in the earth system governance scientific agenda. Earth system governance perspectives have also not significantly infiltrated the juridical domain. In this paper we seek to initiate a debate on the juridical dimensions of earth system governance. We make out a case in support of developing a new overarching legal ph…
Sustainable Development Goals fail to advance policy integration: A large-n text analysis of 159 international organizations
While most of today’s global challenges are deeply interconnected, international organizations often operate in silos. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, have been advanced as a new agenda to break up these silos and to better integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Yet little is known about whether the SDGs had any effects in advancing policy integration. To investigate this, we conduc…
Taming Gaia 2.0: Earth system law in the ruptured Anthropocene
If the Anthropocene is a rupture in planetary history, what does it mean for international environmental law? When the Earth System crosses irreversible tipping points and begins a forceful, nonlinear transformation into a hostile state which I call the ruptured Anthropocene, the concept of protecting the global environment from humans would lose its meaning. Not only the dichotomy between humans and nature becomes irrelevant, but the environment…
Success factors of global goal‐setting for sustainable development: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were an important precursor to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, identifying the conditions that made the MDGs successful enhances our understanding of global goal‐setting and informs the global endeavour to achieve the SDGs. Drawing on a comprehensive review of 316 articles published between 2009 and 2018, we identify six factors that have enabled or hindered MDG implementation. Our analysis…
Policy Integration for Sustainable Development through Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Empirical Analysis, 2007–2016
Over the past three decades, policy integration has become a key objective for guiding and harmonizing policies for sustainable development. Most recently, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals have added new impetus to efforts of integrating competing objectives of environmental sustainability, social development, and economic growth, as well as of integrating issue-specific environmental policies on climate change and terrestrial and marine bi…
How the World Bank Engages with the Sustainable Development Goal on Reducing Inequalities: A Case of Organizational Jiu-Jitsu
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to mobilize various actors, including international organizations, for a global transformation toward sustainability. The expectation was that international organizations would assist in the implementation of the goals and encourage, support, or coordinate others to work toward their achievement. But have international organizations over the last 8 years changed …
Arguments and architectures: Discursive and institutional structures shaping global climate engineering governance
The Anthropocene is giving rise to novel challenges for global environmental governance. The barriers and opportunities shaping the ways in which some of these complex environmental challenges become governable on the global level are of increasing academic and practical relevance. In this article, we bring neo-institutionalist and post-structuralist perspectives together in an innovative framework to analyse how both institutional and discursive…
When implementation works: A comparison of Ramsar Convention implementation in different continents
Augment the SDG indicator framework
The 231 indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are crucial for measuring progress on 169 targets. But the seemingly large number of indicators and the associated cost of monitoring have led to calls for streamlining. Here I present an alternative perspective on the SDG indicators by paying due regard to their performativity, or ability to shape outcomes. By drawing on the literature on conditions under which indicators have uninte…
Massive Institutional Structures in Global Governance
Global governance consists of elementary regimes that form regime complexes, which in turn give rise to what we call superclusters around broad policy domains. In recent years, scholars have explored what these macroscopic structures look like and how they evolve over time. Yet the complex ways in which entire governance superclusters interact and coevolve, and what might emerge through this process, have not received much attention. In this arti…
The SDGs as integrating force in global governance? Challenges and opportunities
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an “integrated and indivisible” set of policy objectives with the aim, among others, to unite the diverse and vast system of international organizations under one shared normative agenda. And yet, have these SDGs really become such an integrative force in global governance? Our conclusion here is negative, and our research suggests that the SDGs have not lived up to …
Seeding the clouds to reach the sky: Will China’s weather modification practices support the legitimization of climate engineering
The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on global policies on sustainable consumption and production
While some of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) rely on the support of established international organizations and regimes, others lack strong institutions in their governance areas. This raises the question of whether the SDGs can contribute to strengthening these less institutionalized areas in global governance, which would make these goals important factors in advancing international institutionalization. We study this question with…
The Martyred
International environmental law as a complex adaptive system
The emergent network structure of the multilateral environmental agreement system
International Environmental Law in the Anthropocene: Towards a Purposive System of Multilateral Environmental Agreements
Our point of analytical departure is that the state of the global environment is deteriorating despite the accumulating body of international environmental law. By drawing on the recent Earth system science concept of interlinked planetary boundaries, this article makes a case for a goal-oriented, purposive system of multilateral environmental agreements. The notion of 'goal' is used here to mean a single, legally binding, superior norm - agrundn…
When implementation works: A comparison of Ramsar Convention implementation in different continents
Global governance by goal-setting: The novel approach of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Earth system law: The juridical dimensions of earth system governance
While the focus of earth system governance is on the human-social aspects of Earth system changes, law has played a peripheral part in the earth system governance scientific agenda. Earth system governance perspectives have also not significantly infiltrated the juridical domain. In this paper we seek to initiate a debate on the juridical dimensions of earth system governance. We make out a case in support of developing a new overarching legal ph…
Policy Integration for Sustainable Development through Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Empirical Analysis, 2007–2016
Over the past three decades, policy integration has become a key objective for guiding and harmonizing policies for sustainable development. Most recently, the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals have added new impetus to efforts of integrating competing objectives of environmental sustainability, social development, and economic growth, as well as of integrating issue-specific environmental policies on climate change and terrestrial and marine bi…
New directions in earth system governance research
The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant a…
The Boundaries of the Planetary Boundary Framework: A Critical Appraisal of Approaches to Define a “Safe Operating Space” for Humanity
In 2009, a group of 29 scholars argued that we can identify a set of “planetary boundaries” that humanity must not cross at the cost of its own peril. This planetary boundaries framework has been influential in generating academic debate and in shaping research projects and policy recommendations worldwide. Yet, it has also come under heavy scrutiny and been criticized. What is today's overall significance and impact of the notion of planetary bo…
What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements
Initiated in 2002, the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) catalogs the texts, memberships, and design features of over 3,000 multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements. Using IEADB data, we create a comprehensive review of the evolution of international environmental law, including how the number, subjects, and state memberships in IEAs have changed over time. By providing IEA texts, the IEADB helps scholars identif…
Cherry‐picking the Sustainable Development Goals: Goal prioritization by national governments and implications for global governance
The member states of the United Nations collectively agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as equally important global objectives. Yet the same states seem to prioritize certain SDGs in national implementation. Such cherry‐picking defies the “integrated and indivisible” nature of the SDGs, and could negatively impact overall progress on sustainable development globally. Which SDGs receive more attention than the others in national po…
Seeding the clouds to reach the sky: Will China’s weather modification practices support the legitimization of climate engineering
Earth system law: Exploring new frontiers in legal science
The Anthropocene requires of us to rethink global governance challenges and effective responses with a more holistic understanding of the earth system as a single intertwined social-ecological system. Law, in particular, will have to embrace such a holistic earth system perspective in order to deal more effectively with the Anthropocene's predicaments. While a growing number of scholars have tried to reimagine law and legal scholarship in a more …
Taming Gaia 2.0: Earth system law in the ruptured Anthropocene
If the Anthropocene is a rupture in planetary history, what does it mean for international environmental law? When the Earth System crosses irreversible tipping points and begins a forceful, nonlinear transformation into a hostile state which I call the ruptured Anthropocene, the concept of protecting the global environment from humans would lose its meaning. Not only the dichotomy between humans and nature becomes irrelevant, but the environment…
Massive Institutional Structures in Global Governance
Global governance consists of elementary regimes that form regime complexes, which in turn give rise to what we call superclusters around broad policy domains. In recent years, scholars have explored what these macroscopic structures look like and how they evolve over time. Yet the complex ways in which entire governance superclusters interact and coevolve, and what might emerge through this process, have not received much attention. In this arti…
Arguments and architectures: Discursive and institutional structures shaping global climate engineering governance
The Anthropocene is giving rise to novel challenges for global environmental governance. The barriers and opportunities shaping the ways in which some of these complex environmental challenges become governable on the global level are of increasing academic and practical relevance. In this article, we bring neo-institutionalist and post-structuralist perspectives together in an innovative framework to analyse how both institutional and discursive…
The (anti-)politics of policy coherence for sustainable development in the Netherlands: Logic, method, effects
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed in 2015, chart an integrated and universal policy agenda to be realised by 2030. To this end, policy coherence for sustainable development is embedded in the SDGs as both an end in itself and a means through which to ensure that the fulfilment of some goals does not come at the expense of others. Yet, as a transformative process and outcome, policy coherence, as articulated in the SDGs, is narrowly…
International organisations as ‘custodians’ of the sustainable development goals? Fragmentation and coordination in sustainability governance
It is widely assumed that the fragmentation of global governance can affect coordination efforts among international institutions and organisations. Yet, the precise relationship between the fragmentation of global governance and the extent to which international organisations coordinate their activities remains underexplored. In this article, we offer new empirical evidence derived from the so‐called custodianship arrangements in which numerous …
Towards planetary nexus governance in the Anthropocene: An earth system law perspective
Nexus governance recognises that sustainability concerns such as water, energy, and food security are interlinked and provides an alternative to fragmented governance. Although it has been applied mostly in the domestic context, the need for nexus governance is also apparent at a planetary scale, as highlighted by interacting planetary boundaries, global telecoupling, and global tipping cascades. However, international environmental law is unable…
The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals: Transforming Governance Through Global Goals
Written by an international team of over sixty experts and drawing on over three thousand scientific studies, this is the first comprehensive global assessment of the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals, which were launched by the United Nations in 2015. It explores in detail the political steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN system and the policies of countries in the Global North and Global South; on…
The CBD Post‐2020 biodiversity framework: People's place within the rest of nature
Recognizing two decades of failure to achieve global goals and targets, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are in the final phase of negotiating a Post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework for the conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing of biodiversity. The framework attempts to set out pathways, goals and targets for the next decade to achieve positive biodiversity change. This perspective intends to help that framework se…
Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, the United Nations agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the central normative framework for sustainable development worldwide. The effectiveness of governing by such broad global goals, however, remains uncertain, and we lack comprehensive meta-studies that assess the political impact of the goals across countries and globally. We present here condensed evidence from an analysis of over 3,000 scientific studies on the Sustainabl…
Sustainable Development Goals fail to advance policy integration: A large-n text analysis of 159 international organizations
While most of today’s global challenges are deeply interconnected, international organizations often operate in silos. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations in 2015, have been advanced as a new agenda to break up these silos and to better integrate environmental, social and economic policies. Yet little is known about whether the SDGs had any effects in advancing policy integration. To investigate this, we conduc…
Success factors of global goal‐setting for sustainable development: Learning from the Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were an important precursor to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, identifying the conditions that made the MDGs successful enhances our understanding of global goal‐setting and informs the global endeavour to achieve the SDGs. Drawing on a comprehensive review of 316 articles published between 2009 and 2018, we identify six factors that have enabled or hindered MDG implementation. Our analysis…
Political science (35 works) · Corporate governance (27 works) · Business (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Sustainable development (20 works) · Economics (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Ecology (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Sustainability (12 works)