The Quest for the Sustainable Development Goals

The Quest for the Sustainable Development Goals
Author: Thiago Gehre Galvao
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-06-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9783031592782

The book presents the experiences, complexities, and contradictions of the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Brazil so far. Through chapters from a variety of stakeholdersincluding political and social actors that go far beyond the federal government, the book examines national, regional, and local aspects of development in Brazil. The book draws from scientific knowledgeand pratical experiences taking a critical look at what the SDGs mean in a Global South country and what the implications of this are for global development. The first section of the book addresses the critical political and institutional aspects related to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Brazil, highlighting advances as well as pitfalls and setbacks. The chapters look at broad questions related to the role of civil society in defining political priorities and strategies to move forward with the SDGs in Brazil, as well as the dilemmas for incorporating the SDGs at the different levels of government and other Brazilian institutions. It critically addresses the political and institutional advances and barriers to the progress of the SDGs in Brazil, as well as political and social innovations that emanate from different sectors of Brazilian society. The second section directly addresses progress made toward the current SDGs in the context of the political, economic and social variables specific to Brazil. The chapters address critical shortcomings and demands for Brazilian society - the need for improvements in the education and employment policies to reduce poverty, the urgent need to increase gender equality and reduce violence, as well as the strengthening institutions and policies to mitigate climate change and protect the environment. The final section focuses on critically assessing the 2030 Agenda itself, drawing from a Global South IR perspective. The chapters here dialog with decolonial and post-developmentalist perspectives to highlight problems with the agenda and lift up sidelined priorities, presenting yet-unexamined policy solutions and innovations that are currently absent from the global institutional agenda. The Brazilian case is a perfect case to understand how underdevelopment and political instability constrain the paths to sustainable development, while accounting for social innovations, leveraging regional dynamics and utilizing social and cultural diversity can drive sustained progress.

Governing the Rainforest

Governing the Rainforest
Author: Eve Z. Bratman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190949392

Sustainable development is often thought of as a product that can be obtained by following a prescribed course of interventions. Rather than conceptualizing it as a sweet spot of economic, ecological, and social balance, sustainable development is an ongoing process of embroilments requiring constant negotiation of often-competing aims. Sustainable development politics yield highly uneven results among different members of society and different geographic areas. As this book argues, such imbalances mean that sustainable development processes often prioritize economic over environmental goals, perpetuating and reinforcing economic and political inequalities. Governing the Rainforest looks at development and conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon, where the government and corporate interests bump up against those of environmentalists and local populations. This book asks why sustainable development continues to be such a powerful and influential idea in the region, and what impact it has had on various political and economic interests and geographic areas. In other words, as Eve Z. Bratman argues, sustainable development is a political practice in itself. This book offers detailed case study analysis, including of the creation of vast conservation corridors, the construction of one of the largest hydroelectric plants in the world, and new forms of land settlement projects. Based on a decade of Bratman's ethnographic fieldwork throughout Brazil, and particularly along the Trans-Amazonian Highway, Governing the Rainforest offers a fresh take on sustainable development within a multi-level analysis of actors, discourses, and practices.

Non-State Actors and Sustainable Development in Brazil

Non-State Actors and Sustainable Development in Brazil
Author: Eduardo Gonçalves Gresse
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2022-11-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1000783839

This book investigates how non-state actors have become key drivers of the diffusion of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Brazil. The UN ranks Brazil as the most biodiverse country in the world, but the country’s environment has never been under greater threat, with the rise of multiple crises bringing mounting challenges to socioeconomic development and environmental protection. As state support has fallen away, non-state actors have actively engaged and eventually mobilized other social actors towards the promotion of the SDGs and the implementation of the UN agenda. This book asks why it is that non-state actors have dedicated so much time, effort and resources to promote a non-binding agenda that was ratified by and is mainly assigned to state actors. Looking at the roles of academia, civil society, and the private sector, the book explores the different ways in which these social actors make sense of and translate the 2030 Agenda into practice within their respective local contexts. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this book sheds light on a series of challenges, opportunities and contradictions within the global agenda and its implementation. Assessing what the Brazil case can teach us about the diffusion of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs more broadly, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Sustainable Development, Latin America Studies and Environmental Politics as well as sustainable development researchers and policy makers.

Environment and Development in Latin America

Environment and Development in Latin America
Author: David Goodman
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1991
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780719033803

An examination of how Latin America, originally viewed by outsiders as a storehouse of natural resources which could be translated into wealth, was not "sustained" in developmental terms in the colonial period. Her ambivalent relationship with the developed world is analyzed to the present day.

The Politics of Sustainable Development

The Politics of Sustainable Development
Author: Susan Baker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 574
Release: 1997
Genre: Environmental policy
ISBN: 0415138744

The Politics of Sustainable Developmentanalyzes how the theory of sustainable development has been related to the practice and how it has been applied within Europe at all levels of government from the EU down to the sub-national local level. The essays included here begin with an analysis of the ambiguities inherent in sustainable development and the contestable nature of the concept. The contributors explore how far it is possible to reconcile economic growth with environmental needs, asking whether sustainable development can promote equity and development. The book breaks fresh ground in assessing the impact of deep ecological thought on sustainable development as part of a new typology of the concept. The second section examines how sustainable development has been interpreted at EU and sub-national levels within the member states, with examples drawn from the Mediterranean and Northern European countries. Contrasting interpretations of sustainable development are examined,considering political and administrative conflicts, the influence of cultural factors, and tensions between different levels of government. The ambiguity of sustainable development has led to extensive confusion and created the need for a clearer consensus among policy-makers as to how the concept should be interpreted.

The Environment, Sustainable Development, and Public Policies

The Environment, Sustainable Development, and Public Policies
Author: Cl¢vis de Vasconcelos Cavalcanti
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2000-05-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781782541257

Government policy for sustainable development: Building sustainability in Brazil. Towards sustainable development. Sacale, ecological economics and the conservation of biodiversity. Environmental valuation in the quest for a sustainable future. Achieving a sustainable world. Policies for sustainable development. Green accounting and macroeconomic policy. A politico-communicative model to overcome the impasse of the current politico-technical model for environmental negotiation in Brazil. Agenda 21: a sustainable development strategy supported by participatory decision-marking processe. International prevate finance and sustainable development: policy instruments for Brazil. Enviromental services as a strategy for sustainable development in rural Amazonia. Exploitation of biodiversity and indigenous Knowledge in Latin America: Challenges to sovereignty and the old order.

Brazil in Transition

Brazil in Transition
Author: Lee J. Alston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2016-05-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691162913

Brazil is the world's sixth-largest economy, and for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century was one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. While the country underwent two decades of unrelenting decline from 1975 to 1994, the economy has rebounded dramatically. How did this nation become an emerging power? Brazil in Transition looks at the factors behind why this particular country has successfully progressed up the economic development ladder. The authors examine the roles of beliefs, leadership, and institutions in the elusive, critical transition to sustainable development. Analyzing the last fifty years of Brazil's history, the authors explain how the nation's beliefs, centered on social inclusion yet bound by orthodox economic policies, led to institutions that altered economic, political, and social outcomes. Brazil's growth and inflation became less variable, the rule of law strengthened, politics became more open and competitive, and poverty and inequality declined. While these changes have led to a remarkable economic transformation, there have also been economic distortions and inefficiencies that the authors argue are part of the development process. Brazil in Transition demonstrates how a dynamic nation seized windows of opportunity to become a more equal, prosperous, and rules-based society.

The Brazilian Amazon

The Brazilian Amazon
Author: Joana Bezerra
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2015-08-25
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319230301

The aim of this book is to analyse the current development scenario in the Amazon, using Terra Preta de Índio as a case study. To do so it is necessary to go back in time, both in the national and international sphere, through the second half of the last century to analyse its trajectory. It will be equally important analyse the current issues regarding the Amazon – sustainable development and climate change – and how they still reproduce some of the problems that marked the history of the forest, such as the absence of Amazonian dark earths as a relevant theme to the Amazon. ​In a world in which the environment gains each time more space in the national and international political agenda, the Amazon stands out. Known around the world for its richness, the South-American forest is the target of different visions, often contradictory ones, and it plays with everyone’s imagination. This is where the terra preta de índio – Amazonian Dark Earths - are found, a fertile soil horizon with high concentrations of carbon with anthropic origins, which has generated great interest from the scientific community. Studies on these soils and their so singular characteristics have triggered crucial discussions on the past, present and the future of the entire Amazon region. Despite its singular characteristics, the importance of Amazonian Dark Earths – and a history of a more productive and populated Amazon – was hidden since its discovery around 1880 until 1980, when it is possible to identify the beginning of an increase in the number of research on these soil horizons. These hundred years between the first records and the beginning of the increase in the interest around these soils witnessed structural changes both in the national arena, with the military dictatorship and a change in the place of the Amazon within internal affairs, and in the international arena with changes that reshaped the role of the environment in the political and scientific agendas and the role of Brazil in the global context.