SDG Lecture Series

Goals for Sustainable Development: Ambivalences of a Global Agenda

With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, the international community signalled its intention to initiate fundamental transformations in politics and society. The guiding principles of this agenda are manifested in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the associated 169 targets. However, while it is widely acknowledged that the SDGs and their targets are more comprehensive, ambitious and concrete than the previous Millennium Development Goals, there is also criticism of inconsistencies within and between individual goals and of the fact that the systemic causes of poverty, conflict and environmental degradation are ignored.

This area of tension is the focus of the multi-semester lecture series "Sustainable Development Goals: Ambivalences of a Global Agenda", which the artec Research Centre for Sustainability at the University of Bremen is organising from the summer semester 2019. In this series of events, speakers from the University of Bremen and other (inter)national research institutions will deal with different goals, discuss them critically and work out the necessities, potentials and limits of the 2030 Agenda. The lectures will focus on the following questions, among others: What problems and approaches to solutions are identified in the individual goals? Which potentials, limits and/or ambivalences can be found in the respective goals and which in the implementation of the respective goal in science, politics and society?

Is there a need for reform of the individual goals or the entire 2030 Agenda, or does their implementation actually hold out the possibility of a sustainable society?

In a kick-off event, the goals will be discussed from a scientific and political perspective, and a closing event will draw a conclusion of the series of events and provide a (hopefully) constructive outlook.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Kellner & Stoll Foundation and the University of Bremen.

Programme of the lecture series winter term 2020/21

Programme of the lecture series winter term 2019/20

Programme of the lecture series summer term 2019