DOOMED TO FAIL OR BOUND TO SUCCEED? Sustainable Development and the Green Economy Agenda – Revisited

Achim Steiner delivered the 2017 STEPS Annual lecture at the University of Sussex on 15 May.

Steiner is former Executive Director of UNEP and now director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. In April 2017 it was announced that he would serve as the next Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Video

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajQwBH27hJY[/embedyt]

Lecture slides

about the lecture

The Annual Lectures are the only part of the STEPS Summer School on Pathways to Sustainability that is open to the public. You can also view materials from past Annual Lectures.

Summary

The lecture will explore whether the ‘sustainable development’ and ‘green economy’ agendas remain relevant in terms of what happens next. Assessing the seemingly contradictory signals of the past 3 years – from recent multilateral breakthroughs, such as the SDGs/Agenda 2030 or the Paris Agreement on the one hand, to an increasingly negative narrative on their actual impact and implementation and the relevance of  multilateralism in global problem-solving on the other – may give rise to a new policy discourse on sustainable development and globalisation.

Inequality and sustainability are at the heart of current critiques of economic policy and globalisation. Can the transition towards an inclusive, green economy succeed in driving the necessary changes required to meet the SDG target or the timelines of the Paris Agreement?