Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals

Frank Biermann; Thomas Hickmann; Carole-Anne Sénit; Marianne  Beisheim; Steven Bernstein; Pamela Chasek; Leonie Grob; Rakhyun  Kim; Louis Kotzé; Andrea Ordóñez  Llanos; Chukwumerije  Okereke; Prajal Pradhan; Rob Raven; Yixian Sun; Marjanneke Vijge; Detlef  van Vuuren; Birka Wicke

doi:10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5

Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals

Frank Biermann, Thomas Hickmann, Carole-Anne Sénit, Marianne Beisheim, Steven Bernstein, Pamela Chasek, Leonie Grob, Rakhyun Kim, Louis Kotzé, Andrea Ordóñez Llanos, Chukwumerije Okereke, Prajal Pradhan, Rob Raven, Yixian Sun, Marjanneke Vijge, Detlef van Vuuren, Birka Wicke

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265 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

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 Sustainable Development Goals published between 2016 and April 2021. Our findings suggests that the goals have had some political impact on institutions and policies, from local to global governance. This impact has been largely discursive, affecting the way actors understand and communicate about sustainable development. More profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare. We conclude that the scientific evidence suggests only limited transformative political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals thus far.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	795-800
Number of pages	6
Journal	Nature Sustainability
Volume	5
Early online date	20 Jun 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5
Publication status	Published - 30 Sept 2022

Funding

This Article synthesizes the core findings of the ‘SDG Impact Assessment’, a larger study that involved 61 scholars from all over the world. The complete assessment with author and reference lists and about 100,000 words of analysis will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022 (The Political Impact of the Sustainable Development Goals: Transforming Governance through Global Goals? , edited by F. Biermann, T. Hickmann and C.A. Sénit). F.B., L.G., T.H. and C.A.S. received funding from the European Research Council for the project GlobalGoals (grant no. 788001, advanced grant F.B.). P.P. received funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the BIOCLIMAPATHS project (grant no. 01LS1906A) under Axis-ERANET. D.v.V. received funding from the European Research Council under grant no. 819566 (PICASSO). Y.Y. and H. Leng acknowledge the financial support from DARPA through award number HR00111920001. L.G. and Y.W. acknowledge the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). X.L. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation through the award number DMR-1936432. H. Liu acknowledges the financial support from Army Research Office through award number W911NF1620010. S.P. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation through CREST Center for Renewable Energy and Advanced Materials (CREAM) award number HRD 1547771.

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Biermann, F., Hickmann, T., Sénit, C.-A., Beisheim, M., Bernstein, S., Chasek, P., Grob, L., Kim, R., Kotzé, L., Llanos, A. O., Okereke, C., Pradhan, P., Raven, R., Sun, Y., Vijge, M., van Vuuren, D., & Wicke, B. (2022). Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals. Nature Sustainability, 5, 795-800. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5

Biermann, F, Hickmann, T, Sénit, C-A, Beisheim, M, Bernstein, S, Chasek, P, Grob, L, Kim, R, Kotzé, L, Llanos, AO, Okereke, C, Pradhan, P, Raven, R, Sun, Y, Vijge, M, van Vuuren, D & Wicke, B 2022, 'Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals', Nature Sustainability, vol. 5, pp. 795-800. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5

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abstract = "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 Sustainable Development Goals published between 2016 and April 2021. Our findings suggests that the goals have had some political impact on institutions and policies, from local to global governance. This impact has been largely discursive, affecting the way actors understand and communicate about sustainable development. More profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare. We conclude that the scientific evidence suggests only limited transformative political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals thus far.",

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AU - Biermann, Frank

AU - Hickmann, Thomas

AU - Sénit, Carole-Anne

AU - Beisheim, Marianne

AU - Bernstein, Steven

AU - Chasek, Pamela

AU - Grob, Leonie

AU - Kim, Rakhyun

AU - Kotzé, Louis

AU - Llanos, Andrea Ordóñez

AU - Okereke, Chukwumerije

AU - Pradhan, Prajal

AU - Raven, Rob

AU - Sun, Yixian

AU - Vijge, Marjanneke

AU - van Vuuren, Detlef

AU - Wicke, Birka

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AB - 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 Sustainable Development Goals published between 2016 and April 2021. Our findings suggests that the goals have had some political impact on institutions and policies, from local to global governance. This impact has been largely discursive, affecting the way actors understand and communicate about sustainable development. More profound normative and institutional impact, from legislative action to changing resource allocation, remains rare. We conclude that the scientific evidence suggests only limited transformative political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals thus far.

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DO - 10.1038/s41893-022-00909-5

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JO - Nature Sustainability

JF - Nature Sustainability

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Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

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