Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. While the SDGs themselves are new, the environmental, economic, social, and politics issues to which they are directed have long and deep histories. In this Introduction to Before the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A Historical Companion the editors explore the value of a historical perspective for understanding the SDGs and contemporary sustainable development challenges. It then proceeds to outline the short-term history of the SDGs since the 1970s. Key aspects of this history include the UN Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the Brundtland Commission’s Report Our Common Future (1987), the series of global conferences in the 1990s that added “the social” as a third pillar alongside the environmental and the economic in the concept of sustainable development, and the creation of the Millennium Development Goals and the SDGs in the 21st century. Finally the chapter sets out the key historical themes addressed by all seventeen of the book’s main chapter: the nature of the phenomena being addressed; how, when, and why human beings became aware of these phenomena; and how actors in the past promoted, steered, or mitigated these phenomena. As such, the Introduction lays the foundation for the subsequent 17 chapters, each of which explores the deep and rich history of one SDG.