Putting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into practice

Lucien Georgeson and Mark Maslin have published a critical review article on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the challenges the world faces in their implementation, and how geographical research may contribute.

The paper, published in the open-access journal Geo: Geography and Environment, discusses the legacy of the earlier Millennium Development Goals and the negotiations leading to the SDGs. It also reviews the challenges and current approaches to the means of ‘implementation’, ‘monitoring’ and ‘finance’ applied to the SDGs.

It is concluded that these three areas alone will not be enough to ensure that the SDGs contribute positively to global development. Improved and revised approaches to global implementation, the application of indicators, and finance are needed to make this possible, and attention to these issues from researchers in geography and beyond will be vital.

Read the paper