The Sustainable Development Goals in global environmental politics

The creation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and subsequent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has reinvigorated research on sustainable development. Through exploring the MDGs and SDGs through a sustainability lens, this chapter seeks to explicate the ways in which the SDGs are shaping global environmental governance across different scales. By engaging with debates over the design of the SDGs, this chapter claims that global environmental politics (GEP) scholars can offer a critical perspective regarding what constitutes sustainable development in the Anthropocene and more broadly about participation and rights in the design of policies for both planetary and human well-being. The SDGs, thus, highlight the need for GEP scholars to devise a clear research agenda that can connect the crosscutting global challenges associated with the SDGs to the needs of communities and peoples at the local level through a framework that takes into account human rights and justice.