Socioecological Challenges and UN policies

This chapter focuses on the interdependence between, on the one hand, contemporary socioecological challenges and, on the other, UN policies and their efficiency in implementing solutions. First, core notions are defined regarding socioecological transformation focusing on freedom, safety, and different forms of equality. Second, the chapter focuses on inequalities pertaining to unequal contributions to the erosion of the Earth system, the unequal consequences of environment and climate challenges for different nations and groups of people, and the unequally distributed consequences of environment and climate interventions. Third, attention is directed at UN governance, briefly covering socioecological aspects of the forms of governance that are predominantly oriented toward climate change, biodiversity, and resources. Mainly, however, the chapter focuses on the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The chapter critically discusses the relations between the SDGs and socioecological issues, as well as the type of goal-based governance and Nationally Determined Contributions that characterize the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs. Fourth, the chapter critically reflects on an attempt by the Stockholm Resilience Center and the Norwegian Business School to combine a small number of targets and indicators pertaining to the SDGs as well as the Planetary Boundaries to indicate solutions to the intertwined ecological, economic, and social challenges. Following up on the SDGs, the chapter draws on the first Global Sustainability Report that was published in 2019 highlighting state-of-the-art knowledge for transformations toward socioecological sustainable development and identifying possible areas of transformational change.