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Adelman, Sam --- "The Sustainable Development Goals, anthropocentrism and neoliberalism" [2018] ELECD 516; in French, Duncan; Kotzé, J. Louis (eds), "Sustainable Development Goals" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 15

Book Title: Sustainable Development Goals

Editor(s): French, Duncan; Kotzé, J. Louis

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781786438751

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Sustainable Development Goals, anthropocentrism and neoliberalism

Author(s): Adelman, Sam

Number of pages: 26

Abstract/Description:

This chapter provides an existential critique of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based upon two main arguments. First, growth-driven development is intrinsically ecologically unsustainable because it destroys ecosystems and breaches planetary boundaries. The SDGs are the latest incarnation of sustainable development, a concept widely criticised as oxymoronic because it erroneously fosters the illusion of combining endless economic growth on a finite planet, social justice, and environmental protection. Second, the SDGs perpetuate an anthropocentric conception of development and sustainability antithetical to effective responses to the rupture of the Earth system in the Anthropocene. The chapter concludes that the model of development envisaged in the SDGs is unlikely to enhance ecological sustainability and thus threatens to increase impoverishment.