Sustainable development: for whom? A critical vision for coherence of Italian and European policies

Published: July 8, 2018

It has only been three years since the new agenda for sustainable development was approved, and the international community is already behind schedule to reach its ambitious goals. All of the hype that went along with Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) produced a type of collective hypnosis, as if the mere fact of declaring a series of goals were enough to ensure that they would be reached, generating a smokescreen that obscured the continuation, and in some cases the acceleration, of the processes of accumulation and concentration of wealth based on a predatory development model that is the antithesis of sustainable development and represents the main obstacle to changing the deep-rooted economic policies that result from it.

The starting point and benchmark for the drafting of this report has been the regulatory framework for human rights, since it defines the public space, identifies the right-holders and their organisations, and defines the meaning and role of the State. This means rejecting mere empty references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and rather reaffirming the centrality and indivisibility of human rights as the cornerstone of modern constitutionalism.

Source: GCAP Italy, ENGIM Internazionale / FOCSIV