| Resumen: |
After years of debate and dialogue at the international level, it is possible that Sustainable
Development Goal (SDG)-fatigue will lead to settling for practical, achievable goals and targets
over ambitious principles that strengthen norms and give national groups a further point of
leverage. Exhaustion from international processes, and short deadlines for national targets,
could truncate the needed dialogue at the national level in favour of a technocratic process to
determine national targets. Drawing evidence from over 150 pieces of literature on international
agreements, this paper proposes lessons for the design of the SDGs. The key message is that
we should not let practicality blunt our ambition, but instead take time to make sure that global
goals can be used for real problem solving around the world. It suggests we may need to look
at the SDGs as closer analogues to international human rights and environmental agreements
than international programmes or, even, than their predecessors, the Millennium Development
Goals. |
