Sustainability Will Require Economic Degrowth

Sustainable development came of age with the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs represent a commitment by world leaders to achieve integrated and interdependent economic, social, and environmental targets by 2030, with particular emphasis on the protection of vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, indigenous peoples, refugees, migrants, and internally displaced persons. The SDGs overcome the fragmentation of international law by recognizing that environmental law, economic law, and human rights law must not operate in silos or at cross-purposes. However, the SDGs contain a fatal flaw. They continue to envision economic growth as the primary engine of poverty reduction. By failing to recognize the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet, the SDGs perpetuate the contradiction between economic growth and ecological sustainability that has long bedeviled the concept of sustainable development