Essential Concepts for Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals: An A-Z Guide

This book provides a highly accessible and uder-friendly overview of the essential concepts and terms related to the current global endeavour to implement the Sustainable Development Goals.

With the first decade of the 15-year timespan of the 2030 Agenda now past, the SDGs show limited progress and several goals are even regressing. It is imperative that SDG implementation is accelerated until 2030 and beyond to foster transformations and set the world onto a sustainable and resilient path. The book starts with a thematic introduction to contextualize the topic and set the stage for the individual entries. It then follows an A-Z format, with over 100 entries which describe an important concept or term, using practical examples to illustrate how it connects to the overall debate about sustainable development. It offers swift introductions to key concepts and terms that are discussed and explained by scholarly and policy experts from around the world in a concise and user-friendly way.

The guide is comprehensive in scope, practically oriented and focused on political and societal processes to drive change on a larger scale. With cross-references to related terms in the entries, this book will be a highly valuable resource for students and practitioners engaged with the SDGs and sustainable development more broadly.

Frank Biermann is a research professor of Global Sustainability Governance at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He has authored or co-edited 20 books and published over 250 articles and book chapters. Among other functions, he founded and served as first chair of the Earth System Governance Project, a global trans-disciplinary research network. He led a EUR 2.5 million project on the impacts of the Sustainable Development Goals, funded by an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. In 2021, he received the Distinguished Scholar Award in Environmental Studies from the International Studies Association. In 2024, he was honoured with the Volvo Environment Prize ’for defining new pathways for international environmental governance in a period of global change’.

Thomas Hickmann is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden. He is highly committed to interdisciplinary collaborations, research-based education and engagements with civil society to identify pathways towards sustainability transformations. He is principal investigator in the project ’Exploring institutional complexity in global biodiversity and climate governance’, funded by the research platform Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate (BECC). He is moreover an associate editor of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics and a senior research fellow of the Earth System Governance Project co-convening the taskforce on the Sustainable Development Goals. His research has been published in prestigious academic journals including Ambio, International Studies Review and Nature Sustainability.

Yi hyun Kang is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden. Her research interests centre around the role of civil society and technology in environmental governance and politics. She has developed her interests through work experiences in journalism, international development and applied research. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles in Belgium, where she focused on the role of youth actors in global environmental politics. She received her PhD from the Technical University of Munich in Germany with a doctoral dissertation on climate change adaptation in river management, comparing institutional responses in Germany and South Korea.

Carole-Anne Sénit is an assistant professor of Inclusive Sustainability Governance with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. She is a political scientist by training, with a career spanning both research on and practice in the civil society sector. Her research explores the democratic legitimacy of sustainability governance with expertise across a broad range of disciplines, methods, and topics including knowledge production, philanthropic foundations, SDGs and civil society. She is a senior research fellow of the Earth System Governance Project, co-convenor of the project’s taskforce on the Sustainable Development Goals, and managing editor of the Earth System Governance journal. She obtained her PhD from Utrecht University, in joint supervision with the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI). Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked as a research fellow at CEVIPOF and IDDRI. She holds a 5-year integrated MSc in Political Science and Sustainable Development from Sciences Po Paris.

Yixian Sun is an associate professor in International Development at the University of Bath, United Kingdom. He studies transnational governance, environmental politics and sustainable development with a focus on emerging economies. Currently, he leads a GBP 1.7 million project on sustainability governance of China’s global infrastructure investments funded by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. He is the author of Certifying China and has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and chapters in high-impact journals and books. He is an associate editor of Global Environmental Politics and World Development Perspectives. Moreover, he is an adjunct senior research fellow at the Institute for Environment and Sustainability of the National University of Singapore and a member of the Earth System Governance Project’s Scientific Steering Committee.