Sustainable Development in the Context of Geopolitical Transformations: New Priorities and Assessment Criteria

Sustainable development in the 21st century is increasingly confronted with constraints arising not only from internal socio-economic difficulties but also from the external environment. According to the logic of the international agenda, sustainability should ensure the achievement of the SDGs by 2030; however, progress is assessed as incomplete and uneven, which means that more precise management of target trajectories and measurement of the effectiveness of the means applied are required. Against this backdrop, the geopolitical transformations of the 2020s are increasing the risk of a “gap” between sustainability declarations and the actual capabilities of states in terms of financing, access to technology, raw materials, and logistics, which particularly emphasizes the need to update assessment approaches. The aim of the study is to analyze how geopolitical shocks are changing the content of sustainable development: from the classical goals of “pure” environmental and social progress to the requirement of resilience to external constraints. Within the framework of this logic, it is significant that monitoring the achievement of the SDGs requires indicators and monitoring criteria, and is also complemented by an assessment of energy security while adhering to the principles of sustainable development. Consequently, the choice of topic is driven by the need to link the universal SDG benchmarks with regionally significant parameters of geopolitical sustainability. The subject of this work is therefore the development of new sustainable development priorities and the refinement of criteria for their assessment in the context of strategic competition, the restructuring of energy and technology chains, and changing cooperation regimes. The practical significance of this work stems from the potential to use the results for scientifically substantiating policy and for improving the comparability of sustainability monitoring at the national and regional levels.