The United Nation’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 integrated goals that address global challenges, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, the environment, peace, and justice. Advancing the SDGs in the US would help to make the US a better place for all. In this episode, host Sarah Backer is joined by editors John Dernbach and Scott Schang to discuss their ELI Press-published book, Governing for Sustainability. The book provides a detailed set of recommendations for federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local governments, as well as the private sector and civil society organized around the SDGs. Scott and John also discuss how the SDGs offer the US a comprehensive framework to build a more prosperous, equitable, resilient, healthy – in other words, sustainable – society.
Relevant Resources:
John Dernbach and Scott Schang, Governing for Sustainability Introduction
Goldman Sachs, The Us Inflation Reduction Act Is Driving Clean-energy Investment One Year In The Nature Conservancy, Family Forest Carbon Program
The Washington Post, ‘Greenhushing’: Why some companies quietly hide their climate pledges
HarperCollins Publishers, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet
Today is the first day of COP28, where participants will discuss the first-ever global stocktake, an assessment of global action on climate change to date. The global stocktake report includes an inventory of climate-related data which evaluates whether the world is on track to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The goal is for countries and other actors to use these technical findings to step up political actions and set more ambitious national targets and actions, to accelerate global climate action. In this week’s episode, host Sarah Backer dives into the equity and environmental justice considerations of the global stocktake with Angela Barranco, the Director for North America at the Climate Group and Charles Di Leva, Partner at Sustainability Frameworks, LLP and Former Chief Officer of Environmental and Social Standards at the World Bank.
Relevant Resources:
Financial Times, UK, Canada and Germany lead fresh push against coal power at COP28
Reuters, COP28 kicks off with climate disaster fund victory
Glasglow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, Amount of finance committed to achieving 1.5°C now at scale needed to deliver the transition
International Energy Agency, For the first time in decades, the number of people without access to electricity is set to increase in 2022
The World Bank, Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies