How Can Science and Education Help Shape Sustainable Development
Figure 2: The combination of Human Development Index and Ecological Footprint reveal global socio-economic disparities (Source: Lin et al. 2018, 58)
Already half a century ago, the “Meadows report”, The Limits to Growth, predicted: If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, “ and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. (Meadows et al. 1972, 23).
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Since then, various milestones in the literature have created broad awareness of the major global challenges, including suggestions on how to deal with them. For example, Our Common Future (WCED 1987); the UN “Rio” Conference on Environment and Development 1992 with its Agenda 21; the United Nations Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs (UNGA 2005); and 2052: A global forecast for the next forty years (Randers 2012). In September 2015, the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development was approved by 193 member states (UNGA 2015). Entitled “Transforming our World”, it contains the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is thus the globally accepted political agenda for SD in the coming years.
Knowledge on the unsustainability of impending developments has been around for half a century, with a first early warning published in 1972 “(The Limits to Growth)”, followed by several other milestones in literature, many of them based on research. The latest milestone – the UN 2030 Agenda with its 17 SDGs, is the globally accepted political agenda for SD in the coming years.
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