Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through the Power of People
It is almost two years that I co-authored a book titled “Sustainable Urban Development in the Age of Climate Change – People: the Cure or Curse” with Palgrave Macmillan Publishers. In this book, we reflected on the importance of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and addressed the role of people in achieving them. This is studied from the main discourse of participatory approaches and how cities and societies should not only face climate change but must become key players to mitigate the impacts in the long run. We believe that our planet’s resuscitation depends on us providing the cure, and its degradation owing to our inaction is our inevitable curse. The book is the result of several years of our applied research into cities and city environments, especially the ones that we have conducted and successfully completed in China in the last decade or so. We know for sure the future trends of sustainable development will not end by the completion of the SDGs timeline in 2030. The fact that we are living on an urban planet, and that urbanisation will continue until at least 2050 puts major pressure on the direction of urban transformations and sustainability ideals. This is just a transition phase and we are the main players of this stage in our civilization and progressive development. Hence, we do believe climate change matters: its impacts are widespread, from food security concerns to issues of energy, water, environment, and society, particularly concerning the resilience of our urban environments.
Since around the start of the 1980s, and mainly since the inception of Agenda 21, research from a number of disciplines has sought to develop methods of sustainable urban development and to tackle the issues around and impacts of climate change. They have particularly focused on innovations concerning new patterns, paradigms, and experimental scenarios that relate to urban sustainability transitions—eco, green, resilient, low carbon, smart, and so on. The framework of the SDGs also highlights the directions of transformations and transitions and is aimed at greater prosperity for all. One of the goals is ‘sustainable cities and communities’, and most of the others are also associated with the urban sustainability agenda. In an urbanising world, this level of attention is inevitable. The implementation of SDGs is set to have a significant impact on the global scale and is aimed at providing substantial achievements by the year 2030.
In our concluding chapter, we provided a comprehensive checklist of effective participatory approaches to the SDGs. We refer to it as the SDG checklist. This is precisely done to respond to the best practices of achieving sustainable urban development through the power of people. In this checklist, to ensure the inclusiveness of bottom-up approaches, we suggest an exploration of power and competence, the by-product of partnership, early participation, education and empowerment, stakeholder analysis, perspectives and context, integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches, institutional support, and a participatory plan.
In our discourse between the SDGs and the role of people, we reflect on possible sustainable pathways for the development of a better society, a better future, and a better planet for all. We believe that people could be the cure to mitigate and potentially reverse some of the climate change impacts, and in doing so, we can become the life-force that sustains our planet. This is the reason why we suggest to start equipping future generations with the tools that will allow them to help the generations that follow them. This requires better education at all levels and with no further delays.
Biography : Ali Cheshmehzangi
Dr. Ali Cheshmehzangi is Head of the Department of Architecture and Built Environment and Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies (CSET), at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
