Environmental Sustainability in the Agenda 2030

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted Agenda 2030 in 2015 with a set of 17 wide-ranging goals that articulate the desired outcome of sustainable development. Some scholars consider these so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) an example of development approaches being increasingly “in tune with the biosphere, of reconnecting development to the biosphere preconditions” (Folke et al., 2016). By contrast, others argue that the SDGs serve neither the development nor the environmental agenda (e.g. Brühl, 2018). Debates range from complaints of marketization and the perceived commodification of nature through a new ‘green growth’ paradigm (e.g. Braunmühl, 2017; Sachs, 2017; Ziai, 2017) to fears of environmental and social considerations only balancing the conventional development paradigm (e.g. Gupta and Vegelin, 2016; Hickel, 2019). The aim of this paper is to assess the position of the biosphere on the global agenda. The paper begins with a first justified categorization of environmental goals in Agenda 2030. This categorization considers academic literature as well as practical interactions with other goals. Against the backdrop of the scholarly controversy on what defines environmental sustainability, the paper then assesses priorities of international institutions (UN, World Bank etc.) regarding the implementation of the SDGs. I conclude that Agenda 2030 means a balance, rather than an integration of biosphere preconditions. Economic development is still dominating the global agenda irrespective of planetary boundaries.