Sustainable Development and the SDGs: A Note on Current Development

Abstract

Sustainable development, a new consensus on international development that aims to protect the environment and resources for future generations, is currently promoted on a global scale, as demonstrated by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development is an embodiment of noble reflections on the world’s future, but it also presents considerable issues for developing countries that promote economic development to escape from poverty. The resource constraints faced by these developing countries create substantial difficulty for them to achieve a number of SDGs simultaneously. Also, the ways in which international financial organizations promote the SDGs, including SDG-related conditionalities attached to loans, may interfere with the right to self-determination and prevent developing countries from focusing on economic development to escape from pressing poverty. This note discusses these issues, on account of a recent article published in Law and Development Review, “Engendering Constitutional Realisation of Sustainable Development in Nigeria” by Peter Oniemola. This article adopts the rights-based approaches to sustainable development, and the note also offers a comment on this approach.

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), developing countries, poverty, right to self-determination, development priorities

JEL Classification: K10, K19, K32, O00, O10, O11, O19, O44