Preprint Review Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters.

Version 1 : Received: 13 May 2022 / Approved: 13 May 2022 / Online: 13 May 2022 (07:48:45 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Bendell, J. Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters. Sustainability 2022, 14, 8185. Bendell, J. Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters. Sustainability 2022, 14, 8185.

Abstract

This transdisciplinary review of research about international cooperation on social and environmental change builds the case for replacing Sustainable Development as the dominant framework for an era of increasing crises and disasters. The review is the output of an intentional exploration of recent studies in multiple subject areas, based on the authors’ decades of work in related fields since the Rio Earth Summit 30 years ago (rather than a keyword search of databases). It summarizes the research which documents failure to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Consequently, the extensive scholarship critiquing the conceptual framework behind those ‘Global Goals’, and the economic ideology they arose from and support, is used to explain that failure. Although the pandemic set back the SDGs, it further revealed the inappropriate strategy behind those goals. This suggests the Global Goals constitute an ‘own-goal’ scored against people and nature. From this conclusion, alternative frameworks for organizing action on social and environmental issues become more important and are therefore briefly reviewed. It is argued that such a future framework must relate a new eco-social contract between citizen and state, and engage existing organizations and capabilities that are relevant to an increasingly disrupted world. Therefore, the case is made for considering an upgraded form of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) as an overarching framework. The proposed upgrades include detaching from economic ideologies, and recognizing that a wider metadisaster from climate chaos may reduce the future availability of external support. Therefore, self-reliant resilience and locally-led adaptation are identified as important to the future of DRM. Some options for professionals continuing to use the term sustainability, such as this journal, are discussed.

Keywords

Sustainable Development; Sustainable Development Goals; Sustainability; Postdevelopment; Degrowth; Disaster Risk Reduction; United Nations; Permacrisis; Metadisaster.

Subject

Social Sciences, Safety Research

Comments (0)

Comment 1
Received: 19 May 2022
Commenter: Sean Kelly
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Hi Jem!

Thank for sharing this important article with me. Here are my few comments:

1. You articulate a powerful critique of "sustainable development" and of the SDGs. You also make a good case for turning instead to DRM as an alternative framework. Great incorporation of insights from other social sciences.

2. Personally, I would propose the emerging field of integral ecologies as a more comprehensive framework, within which DRM and DA would play key roles.

3. I find the section on the pandemic less than compelling with regard to critique of government intervention; the main goal of the article would be better served without it (or suitably modified).

4. similarly for the shorter remarks on "eco-freedom" and "eco-libertarianism". While these might seem to follow from your well-grounded critique of the capital-captured national and international governing structures, I think a stronger case could be made for more robust, efficient, and ethically guided interventions on the part of such structures.

I hope you are well, my friend. It would be great to connect live again before too long.

Love, Sean
+ Respond to this comment
Comment 2
Received: 24 May 2022
Commenter: Sean Kelly
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: Hi Jem!

Thank for sharing this important article with me. Here are my few comments:

1. You articulate a powerful critique of "sustainable development" and of the SDGs. You also make a good case for turning instead to DRM as an alternative framework. Great incorporation of insights from other social sciences.

2. Personally, I would propose the emerging field of integral ecologies as a more comprehensive framework, within which DRM and DA would play key roles.

3. I find the section on the pandemic less than compelling with regard to critique of government intervention; the main goal of the article would be better served without it (or suitably modified).

4. similarly for the shorter remarks on "eco-freedom" and "eco-libertarianism". While these might seem to follow from your well-grounded critique of the capital-captured national and international governing structures, I think a stronger case could be made for more robust, efficient, and ethically guided interventions on the part of such structures.

I hope you are well, my friend. It would be great to connect live again before too long.

Love, Sean
+ Respond to this comment

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