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 institutional integration and policy coherence; and on the ecological integrity and inclusiveness of sustainability policies worldwide. This book is a key resource for scholars, policymakers and activists concerned with the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, and those working in political science, international relations and environmental studies. It is one of a series of publications associated with the Earth System Governance Project. For more publications, see www.cambridge.org/earth-system-governance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Frank Biermann is a research professor of Global Sustainability Governance with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. He pioneered the 'earth system governance' paradigm in global change research in 2005, and was founder and first chair of the Earth System Governance Project, a widely renowned global transdisciplinary research network of sustainability scholars. He has authored or edited 18 books and published more than 200 articles and book chapters, along with over 100 policy contributions.

Thomas Hickmann is an associate senior lecturer (assistant professor) in the Department of Political Science at Lund University. His research focuses on the question of how societies can best deal with transboundary issues and provide global common goods in the sustainability domain from local to global levels. He is co-convener of the taskforce on the Sustainable Development Goals of the Earth System Governance Project and served from 2015 to 2021 on the steering committee of the Environmental Politics/Global Change working group of the German Political Science Association.

Carole-Anne Sénit is a political scientist with a career spanning both research on and practice in the civil society sector. Her research explores the integration of the Global South in global change science, global civil society, and global institutions. She is a research fellow of the Earth System Governance Project, co-convener of the project's taskforce on the Sustainable Development Goals, and managing editor of the Earth System Governance journal.