The Dutch SDG Barometer 2024 reveals a nuanced perspective on sustainability progress in the Netherlands. While awareness of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remains high among Dutch organizations, significant challenges persist in their prioritization, implementation and measurement.This second edition of the SDG Barometer, developed collaboratively by Amsterdam School of International Business (AMSIB), Maastricht School of Management (MSM), and TIAS School for Business and Society, builds on its 2022 debut. It provides valuable insights into the adoption of the SDGs, showcasing both encouraging trends and persistent barriers as the 2030 deadline approaches. Key Findings from the Dutch SDG Barometer 20241.Sustainability Awareness: Nearly 70% of organizations in the Netherlands claim to prioritize sustainability, a steady trend from 2022. However, only 15% have fully integrated SDGs into their sustainability strategies.2.Framework Competition: While the SDG framework remains widely used, mandatory EU guidelines such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) are starting to surpass the SDGs in usage, raising concerns about a ‘crowding-out effect.’3.Obstacles Persist: Resource constraints and knowledge gaps remain the top barriers to SDG implementation, though awareness and understanding of the goals have improved since 2022.4.Communication Decline: The number of organizations not communicating internally (31%) or externally (30%) about their SDG efforts has risen sharply, reflecting a potential de-prioritization.5.Government Role: A majority of respondents (55%) believe government support for SDG adoption is insufficient, while a consistent 80% of organizations agree that the government should play an active role in encouraging SDG adoption.6.Sectoral Insights: Educational institutions lead in SDG awareness, while not-for-profits and governmental bodies show varying levels of alignment. Corporate participation, though significant, often lacks depth in SDG integration.
MULTIFILE
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are our plan for a futureproof world in which every person can live in peace and prosperity. The power of this vision is even more relevant today than it was when the Goals were adopted in 2015. The 17 Goals provide the basis to make our societies and economies resilient against crises, both in the present and in the future.
LINK
The SDG Barometer monitors the extent to which organizations in the Netherlands are aware of, adopt and implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals and integrate them into their strategies. This Dashboard is meant to provide open access to the survey results in an interactive way, so that students, academics and organizations can benefit and learn from its insights.
MULTIFILE
Kennismaken met de 17 werelddoelen? Dat kan met deze introductieles voor hbo onderwijs over de Sustainable Development Goals.
MULTIFILE
The research explores what the SDG Framework, on the basis of the two major SDG challenges -the complexity challenge and the silo challenge-, are demanding of HEIs in terms of SDG Governance, the formulation of its Third Mission, its internal alignment to integrate the SDG and equip the Research and Educational departments with the right SDG competences. The research uses the conceptual approach of Intended SDG Policies, Actual SDG Practice and SDG Perceptions. Recent and relatively young SDG literature is explored and it draws conclusions that there are assumptions on the feasibility of achieving them. Are SDGs aspirational or inspirational? And should the Framework be considered a temporarily binding guidance rather than a global enforcement mechanism to prevent depletion of our social and natural capital? Much SDG research stops at providing analytical frameworks and tools to grapple with the complexity of SDG’s synergies, tradeoffs and spill-over effects. Some literature and tools are available on SDG pathways of urgency and priority ranking but this contradicts the Transformational claims of the SDGs of being Integrative, Indivisible and Universal. A theoretical and practical gap is observed how the SDGs must be viewed in the global community of national policies. But also as a derivative : How can organisations, private and public, view and address the challenges of the SDG Framework?
DOCUMENT
Environmental unsustainability is due to both structural features and historically specific characteristics of industrial capitalism resulting in specific patterns of production and consumption, as well as population growth. Sustainability literature criticises the established corporate and political power hegemonies, interested in maintaining economic growth, as well as inability or unwillingness of citizen-consumers to counteract these hegemonic tendencies. Yet, official policies are still targeted at social and economic ‘development’ as a panacea for unsustainability challenges. Instead, renewed accent on social and economic objectives are outlined by a set of sustainable development goals (SDG) that include objectives of fighting poverty, promoting better health, reducing mortality, and stimulating equitable economic growth. What is less commonly critiqued is the underlying morality of unsustainability and ethical questions concerned with the ‘victims of unsustainability’ outside of socioeconomic discourse. The achievement of SDG goals, as will be further elaborated on in this article, is unlikely to lead to greater social equality and economic prosperity, but to a greater spread of unsustainable production and consumption, continuous economic as well as population growth that has caused environmental problems in the first place and further objectification of environment and its elements. This article argues that an invocation of ethical duty toward environment and its elements is required in order to move beyond the current status quo. Such ethical approach to unsustainability can effectively address the shortcomings of the mainstream sustainability discourse that is mainly anthropocentric and therefore fails to identify the correct locus of unsustainability. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International "Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology" on 2015 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2015.1111269 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
Een kennisclip over de Sustainable Development Goals
VIDEO
DOCUMENT
Anthropocentrism is the belief that value is human-centered and that all other beings are means to human ends. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anthropocentrism as “regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence”. Anthropocentrism focuses on humanistic values as opposed to values found in non-human beings or ecosystems. With the popularization of the concept of ecosystem services, the idea of protecting the environment for the sake of human welfare is reflected in the SDGs. Within the SDGs, the instrumental use of the environment for the sake of alleviating poverty, combatting climate change, and addressing a range of other social and economic issues is promoted. Since the conception of the SDGs, there has been a discussion about anthropocentrism in ‘sustainable development’ (e.g., Kopnina 2016a and 2017, Strang 2017, Adelman 2018; Kotzé and French 2018) and how the SDGs can be antithetical to effective responses to sustainability challenges. The SDGs’ accent on economic growth and social equality as well as environmental protection actually result in ethical as well as practical paradoxes. While central to the SDG’s is ‘sustained and inclusive economic growth’ (UN 2015), the prioritization is on the economy, NOT the planet that nurtures both social and economic systems. Anthropocentrism, in this case, refers to the exclusive focus on short-term human benefits, whereas biodiversity loss is not considered a great moral wrong (Cafaro and Primack 2014). The three overarching anthropocentric SDG goals, economic growth, resilience, and inclusion, will be critically examined below and ways forward will be proposed. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319959801 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
