Ecological Limits of Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals

This book uses ecological economics to recast the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as Ecological Livelihood Goals, aiming to reconcile social and spatial mobility with material security and ecological integrity. It explores the implications of ecological limits for modern progressive politics and provides recommendations for reconfiguring the UN's SDGs as Ecological Livelihood Goals.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 294 pages
Publication date: 31 May 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Embracing the reality of biophysical limits to growth, this volume uses the technical tools from ecological economics to recast the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as Ecological Livelihood Goals – policy agendas and trajectories that seek to reconcile the social and spatial mobility and liberty of individuals, with both material security and ecological integrity.

Since the 1970s, mainstream approaches to sustainable development have sought to reconcile ecological constraints with modernization through much vaunted and seldom demonstrated strategies of ‘decoupling and ‘dematerialization. In this context, the UN SDGs have become the orchestrating drivers of sustainability governance. However, biophysical limits are not so easily sidestepped. Building on an ecological-economic critique of mainstream economics and a historical-sociological understanding of state formation, this book explores the implications of ecological limits for modern progressive politics. Each chapter outlines leverage points for municipal engagement in local and regional contexts. Systems theory and community development perspectives are used to explore under-appreciated avenues for the kind of social and cultural change that would be necessary for any accommodation between modernity and ecological limits. Drawing on ideas from H.T. Odum, Herman Daly, Zigmunt Bauman, and many others, this book provides guiding research for a convergence between North and South that is bottom-up, household-centred, and predicated on a re- emerging domain of Livelihood. In each chapter, the authors provide recommendations for reconfiguring the UNs SDGs as Ecological Livelihood Goals – a framework for sustainable development in an era of limits.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, sustainability science, political science, and economics.

Weight: 470g
Dimension: 233 x 158 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367540760