The UN Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Commentary constitutes an expert encyclopaedia on the subject matter that combines legal and policy analysis through critical lens. In its seventeen chapters the treatise offers a goal-by-goal and target-by-target analysis of the SDGs by reference to each goal’s travaux préparatoires, an exhaustive examination of their content, and a critique from an international law perspective. Normative and legal questions arising from the incorporation of the SDGs into the international economic, social, and environmental legal framework are addressed conclusively with argumentation being grounded in relevant treaties and soft law instruments as well as the jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals, and principles of international law on sustainable development. Importantly, however, the authors complement their legal analysis with empirical evidence from the most credible sources of datasets in order to provide a robust assessment of the SDGs’ implementation status. This volume constitutes an influential reference tool for practitioners and scholars in the fields of law, politics, economics, policy, and global governance gathering interdisciplinary scholarship and practice under one source in an authoritative manner.