Global Governance in the Age of the Anthropocene: Are Sustainable Development Goals the Answer?

We live in challenging times. Thanks to technological advances and increasing global interconnectedness, we have made great progress in addressing some crucial social problems. Between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate declined by more than half – from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 lives – while the global malaria mortality rate decreased by 58 percent. During the same time period, the number of people living in extreme poverty decreased globally from 1.9 billion to 836 billion. In terms of the environment, by 2015 ozone depleting substances were nearly eliminated, while 91 percent of the world’s population had access to improved sources of drinking water, as compared to 76 percent in 1990 (UN 2015).Despite this progress, severe global challenges remain. We have entered the Age of the Anthropocene, a period in which human actions significantly influence the environment. The number of undernourished people increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016. Unsafe drinking water and sanitation problems continue to generate fatal diseases, which resulted in 870,000 deaths in 2016 alone. Even more alarming is the number of deaths as a result of air pollution, which stood at 7 million in 2016. Damage to housing as a result of natural disasters has increased drastically over the past 30 years, and 90 percent of deaths from these disasters are occurring in low and middle-income countries (UN 2018). Extreme weather conditions, rising sea levels, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to threaten terrestrial and marine ecosystems, as evidenced by the increasing frequency of natural disasters.These alarming statistics have not gone unnoticed. Scientists and policymakers have intensified their efforts to find solutions that address the complex problems emerging from human-environment relations. The emphasis on the links between economic development and the environment is evident in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—the UN’s plan of action to eradicate poverty and advance prosperity while protecting our planet (UN General Assembly 2015). While at the turn of the century the international community focused primarily on socioeconomic development (captured in the eight Millennium Development Goals), in 2015 environmental sustainability was central to the negotiations leading to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Of course, sustainable development is not a new concept. In terms of balance between consumption and renewal of resources, sustainable development dates back centuries, but in its modern form it can be traced to the 1987 Brundtland Commission definition: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). Yet, efforts to link development and environment in global governance are rather recent.How can we achieve sustainable development? Do we have the appropriate strategies to advance people’s prosperity while protecting the planet? Do our governance systems have what it takes to respond to the complex challenges emanating from human-environment relations? If not, what kinds of governance innovations could lead to a sustainable and resilient path?The three insightful publications reviewed here offer different answers to these questions. In Transforming Multilateral Diplomacy, Macharia Kamau, Pamela Chasek, and David O’Connor provide a detailed account of the process leading to the establishment of the SDGs, while highlighting this process as a change in the way the UN usually conducts multilateral diplomacy. Norichika Kanie and Frank Biermann’s edited volume, Sustainable Development Goals as Governance Innovation, is an informed and informative collection of essays examining goal setting as a governance strategy in response to sustainability issues. Governing Complex Systems by Oran Young, who also contributes to Kanie and Biermann’s volume, takes us through a rigorous analysis of environmental governance, drawing on past lessons and reflecting on possible alternative governance mechanisms that adequately address complex systems. All three books agree that a business-as-usual approach is no longer suitable in resolving issues of sustainability, due to the “problem of fit,” as Young calls it (p. 1). However, the authors vary in their assessment of SDGs and their utility as effective governance instruments.Relying on the first-hand experience of Ambassador Macharia Kamau, then the co-chair of the UN’s Open Working Group (OWG) tasked with coordinating the UN member states’ negotiations around the SDGs, Kamau, Chasek, and O’Connor offer an insiders’ account of the people, processes, and procedures that led to the creation and endorsement of the SDGs. While the account of contentions and controversies surrounding the negotiations adds a nice flair to the book, the more instructive contributions are embedded in the reflections and lessons learned for diplomacy at the end of each chapter. The authors continuously take stock of the tools and innovations of multilateralism emerging from the SDG process and suggest that a paradigm shift began when the UN member states, over a period of three years, collectively negotiated the seventeen SDGs under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.Indeed, the SDGs were negotiated in a manner quite different from that of their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals. All three books dedicate some space to discussing the different processes that gave rise to these development agendas. The top-down and exclusive nature of the MDGs is contrasted with the bottom-up, participatory, inclusive process that generated the SDGs. While Kamau, Chasek, and O’Connor praise the process of the SDGs as a paradigm shift, Kanie and Biermann highlight the negative implications of this inclusive and participatory process. Several of the volume’s contributors discuss the lack of normative consensus around some of the goals – for example, gender equality and human rights. They also question the SDGs’ overall impact, in light of missing issue linkages and possible non-compliance on behalf of states. Young’s approach to this question in this volume is more conceptual and theoretical. Rather than focusing on the SDGs specifically, he asks what determines governance effectiveness in human-environment relations. He agrees with the other contributors that inclusiveness in the process can enhance legitimacy and compliance. Later applying his theoretical framework to the SDGs, Young is reluctant to predict what kind of impact they will have, due to their sheer size and often-vague nature. He also does not disparage the process, instead thinking through ways it could be amended to lead to better results.There is no doubt that this process was a novelty in the history of the UN, and the OWG was certainly an innovative mechanism that set a precedent for inclusive negotiations. Kamau, Chasek, and O’Connor are right to praise the process and the success of establishing the SDGs. It is no small feat to get 193 countries to agree to a set of goals that are “action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries” (UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012, par. 247). Nevertheless, it seems to be a stretch to describe the SDGs or the process that gave rise to them as a paradigm shift. If one is to go by Thomas Kuhn’s understanding of a paradigm shift in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2015), then what we witnessed with the SDGs was not “revolutionary” but “normal science,” indicating a progression in our acknowledgment of human-environment relations and the need to integrate what the UN has termed the three dimensions of development: social, economic, and environmental. However, the sustainability challenges that the SDGs aim to address are so complex and urgent that they call for a shift in mindset and approach to problem solving that resembles Kuhn’s revolutionary science. In other words, what we need is a paradigm shift.Young, who has been studying governance systems focusing on environmental issues for four decades, agrees with this assessment and asks what measures need to be undertaken to enhance governance in the anarchic setting of international society, especially within the context of new challenges emerging in the Anthropocene Age, which call for innovative ways to govern complex systems. Calling for a shift from the current “mainstream regulatory approach” of governance to the need “to expand our toolkit” to include new approaches to governance (p. 3), Young essentially declares the need for a paradigm shift in our response to issues of sustainability. The chapters in his book take the reader systematically through “the Age of Complexity” by defining the features of complex systems, considering determinants of effective problem solving, and assessing existing governance mechanisms. At the same time, he offers alternative strategies with the potential to better respond to sustainability issues beset by nonlinear behavior, abrupt and surprising development, and potentially irreversible outcomes.Might goal-setting be the appropriate response to sustainability challenges? After all, despite the difficulties of parsing the causal mechanisms at work, many analysts agree that the MDGs achieved some of their intended targets. Do the SDGs present appropriate tools to reconcile the diverse needs of socioeconomic development and environmental sustainability? Kanie and Biermann, as well as Young, consider the implications of goal-setting as a governance strategy. Both books differentiate between goal-setting and rule-making as distinct governance strategies, and the former serving as an aspiration to galvanize support for defined targets while the latter prescribing action and focusing on compliance and enforcement. While arguing that goal-setting is a better fit for the abrupt and uncertain nature of sustainability challenges we face in the Anthropocene, Young emphasizes the importance of integrating goals and rules for an effective governance system.Indeed, those who have been closely following the 2030 Agenda have witnessed the publicity and mobilization around the SDGs and wondered how the voluntary nature of compliance and lack of enforcement will help fulfill these goals in practice. As Kanie and Biermann correctly point out, “governance through goals is detached from the international legal system” (p. 296). Legally binding provisions that commit states to implement the SDGs at the national level are replaced with (often) vague goals and targets, weak institutional oversight at the global level, and national leverage over goal preferences. Young comes to a similar conclusion, considering the size and scope of the SDGs to be self-defeating, as they lead “to competition for attention and conflict over the allocation of scarce resources” (p. 140). Thus, while Kamau, Chasek, and O’Connor celebrate the SDGs as a diplomatic coup de maître, Young, along with Kanie and Biermann, questions the extent to which the 2030 Agenda will impact national priorities and policies in pursuit of sustainable development.Can the SDGs serve their purpose, or are they an exercise in futility? The authors are overwhelmingly optimistic, although they have different recommendations to make global governance more effective. Several essays in Kanie and Biermann’s volume draw lessons from the MDGs’ goal-setting exercise, examining water, food, energy, and health issues, and conclude that their underachievement results from “the mismatch between the structure of problems and institutional solutions” (p. 13). They highlight, in particular, the lack of integrated action in the operationalization of the goals, which becomes even more important in the context of the SDGs, which call for a substantive integration of development and environment. The volume highlights the challenges in implementation. The authors suggest that refining the indicators, strengthening the role of the High Level Political Forum as an “orchestrator” in global sustainability governance, enhancing the reliability and predictability of resource mobilization, and focusing on issue interlinkages in policy implementation will go a long way to help achieve the SDGs. They also emphasize the important role of multi-stakeholder partnerships, including the private sector, in implementing the goals.Young’s analysis, on the other hand, points not to reform but to transcending the regulatory paradigm and exploring alternative governance strategies. Arguing that the processes involved in creating governance systems influence their operational effectiveness, he considers how participation, transparency, and accountability might impact effective governance. The two alternative strategies he examines in some detail are “principled governance” and governance through goal-setting. The former offers normative guidance without any prescription of targets or rules, with the aim of creating a common normative framework that leads actors towards a common end. The latter sets priorities, defines targets, and allocates resources with the aim of encouraging actors to achieve the goals. Young is cognizant of the shortcomings of these alternatives, as compliance and enforcement are left to states’ own devices, and views these as additional tools in a “portfolio of governance strategies” (p. 215). However, while he makes a good case for the need to come up with alternative solutions to deal with the problems of the Anthropocene, Young’s goal-setting and principled governance do not represent a paradigm shift either. After all, the MDGs and SDGs fall squarely into these two types of governance, and, as all the authors agree, the real test of their effectiveness is in the success of their implementation.How effective has the implementation of the SDGs been so far? Can states, donors, and international organizations achieve these goals? Kamau, Chasek, and O’Connor are steadfast in emphasizing the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships, and they describe at length the efforts that the OWG put into engaging civil society, academia, and private sector, among others. Young acknowledges the growing interest in the role of non-state actors, although in this book he focuses on “state-centric governance strategies” (p. 215). While he is cautious about the potential benefits of public-private partnerships and believes that institutional arrangements are key to effective governance, Young argues that these need to be explored to expand our governance repertoire. Kanie and Biermann also agree with Young’s assessment and add that such partnerships do not necessarily have to take place at the global level. Since implementation will primarily take place at the national level, Kanie and Biermann expect national public and private actors to form a “coalition of the willing” (p. 302) to focus on a specific issue area.What lessons for policymakers can be drawn from these books? All three agree on the transformative nature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They also recognize that the complex and urgent nature of today’s global sustainability challenges requires institutional arrangements and governance systems that are more responsive and effective. These three books offer a wealth of information and analysis about global governance over the course of the 21st century, with some astute observations and recommendations on making governance more effective. It is also clear, as the authors themselves acknowledge, that much more needs to be done to find nimble strategies fit for the Age of the Anthropocene. Strengthening the interface between science and policy is certainly one such area, as science plays a key role in “shaping the intellectual capital” to address sustainability problems (Young, p. 235). Another area is the engagement of the private sector. While there has been an increasing call over the past three decades to include non-state actors, in particular civil society, in global governance, the role of corporate entities has been left largely untapped. Yet, the enormous resources required to achieve the SDGs call for greater engagement and investment by corporate entities. Finally, we need to scrutinize the fit between our institutions and the challenges they are set out to resolve. The SDGs’ combination of development and environment has already created a conceptual shift in our understanding of the interlinkages between people and our planet. What we need now are the institutional arrangements capable of steering the behavior of actors (states and non-state actors alike) engaged in responding to sustainable development challenges. This is ostensibly the kind of paradigm shift that addressing today’s sustainability challenges calls for.