“We pursue justice”

Private philanthropic foundations—nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations with assets provided by donors for socially useful purposes—have become key political actors in global sustainability governance. Their collective efforts amount to over USD 112 billion for the implementation of the United Nations (UNs)’s ambitious plan to deliver on seventeen interconnected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This corresponds to about a quarter of governmental contribution through official development assistance for the same purposes. Many of these foundations implicitly or explicitly aim to foster global justice, through, for example, empowering women, reducing inequalities, and promoting democracy. They thus act as justice agents shaping the substance and practice of justice in global sustainability governance. But what does this direction of private money into supporting global justice norms really mean? This question deserves scrutiny, especially against a context of diverse and contested meanings of justice and because philanthropy—beyond an act of giving—is often an exercise of power. Using critical discourse analysis of texts produced by selected foundations that are key funders of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, this paper examines how private foundations frame global justice and with what implications for sustainability governance.

Ethical questions concerning global sustainability governance have been widely discussed with respect to the role of civil society in general. Interestingly, faith-based actors (FBAs) have so far attracted scant attention in this context. Yet FBAs actively participate in international political negotiations and public debates on sustainable development. Secularisation theory differentiates between religious and secular actors. To date, however, it remains unclear whether FBAs contribute a distinct faith-based perspective to global sustainable development discourse and, if so, what this perspective is. The present article aims to identify the relevant norms and ideas in FBAs’ communications and to contrast them with other existing ideas on sustainable development. On the basis of a content analysis of the submissions by FBAs and non-faith based civil society groups in the context of the UN Rio+20 summit, the article first investigates what visions are contained in current articulations of FBAs with respect to sustainable development. Secondly, it explores in what way FBAs’ ideas about sustainable development differ from those of secular civil society. Our analysis establishes a basis for further inquiries into the role of FBAs in global sustainable development discourse.

Scrutinizing environmental governance in a digital age: New ways of seeing, participating, and intervening

A revised version of this working paper has been published as: Biermann, Frank. 2012. Greening the United Nations Charter: World Politics in the Anthropocene. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. May / June 2012. A constitutional turn is needed to bring the UN system in line with the urgent needs of planetary stewardship and earth system governance in the 21st century. Yet how this could be organized in practice remains a challenge and subject to political and scholarly debate. This paper contributes to this debate by outlining four reforms of the UN system that would advance global decision-making by addressing major shortcomings in the current system: Lack of integration of economic and environmental policies in the UN system; institutional fragmentation and weakness of the environmental pillar of sustainable development; lack of high-level regulatory competence and oversight regarding areas beyond national jurisdiction; and insufficient integration of scientific insights into political decision-making. The reforms proposed would together create an Earth Alliance in the UN system, consisting of a high-level UN Sustainable Development Council, a World Environment Organization, a UN Trusteeship Council for Areas beyond National Jurisdiction, and an UN Global Environmental Assessment Commission.

This article examines the role of normative power in shaping the global sustainability order. It challenges the prevailing focus on hegemonic leadership and norm diffusion from dominant states, arguing that less powerful states have contributed significantly to the global order by creating regional initiatives tailored to their unique contexts. The article adopts an alternative theoretical framework of norm-governed change, comprising norm-building, institutionalisation, and transformation. Using an illustrative case study of Africa’s regional economic institutions, it employs process-tracing and archival analysis of key policy documents. The study demonstrates how African states have proactively embedded environmental norms within their regional initiatives, while contributing to the global sustainability agenda, exemplifying a form of normative power referred to as ‘Green Pan-Africanism’. This approach broadens the understanding of global sustainability governance, positioning less economically powerful actors as active participants in world-making. The findings highlight the critical role of normative power in advancing global sustainability governance, particularly in addressing complex global challenges such as climate change.

Cities and their governments are increasingly recognized as important actors in global sustainability governance. With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, their role in the global endeavor to foster sustainability has once again been put in the spotlight. Several scholars have highlighted pioneering local strategies and policies to implement the Sustainable Development Goals and render urban areas more sustainable. However, the question of how such urban sustainability actions are embedded in complex interactions between public and private actors operating at different levels has not been studied in enough detail. Building upon a multi-level governance approach, this article explores the entanglement and interconnectedness of cities and local governments with actors and institutions at various levels and scales to better capture the potential and limitations of urban policymaking contributing to global sustainability. The article finds that on the one hand cities and their governments are well positioned to engage other actors into a policy dialogue. On the other hand, local authorities face considerable budgetary and institutional capacity constraints, and they heavily rely on support from actors at other governmental levels and societal scales to carry out effective sustainability actions in urban areas.

Research background:The COVID-19 pandemic revealed many problems in global logistics, economy and sustainability. Very long time the globalization has been seen as the motor of international development and prosperity. Because the COVID-19 pandemic the global logistics has seriously affected (for example air and sea logistics), especially European and US economies have experienced serious setback and even the global sustainability has been under turmoil.Purpose of the article:In this article the major logistic, economic and sustainability challenges revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic during the years 2020 and 2021 will be researched and the research aims to define, how the global logistics, economy and sustainability have been affected and especially which of these changes can be seen irreversible. The world has already started the change of economic paradigm manifested by the Financial Times on September 18th 2019 in their article “Capitalism: Time for a Reset”. All the aspects highlighted by FT were catalysed by COVID-19 pandemic and now it is time to define, how we can use this experience for creation of the new globalization paradigm.Methods:The main method of creating this article is to find and analyse recent practical information about challenges, development and solutions in logistics, economics and sustainability.Findings & Value added:The main finding of this article is to create a holistic overview about what happened and what has been done in global logistics, economy and sustainability and how the post-COVID-19 ought to deal with globalization. The world will never return back to the status quo which was before the new economic paradigm and COVID-19, so it is necessary to understand, how our globalized world will change in the future.

Abnormal Justice

Global sustainability governance is marked by a highly fragmented system of distinct clusters of international organizations, along with states and other actors. Enhancing inter-organizational coordination and cooperation is thus often recognized as an important reform challenge in global sustainability governance. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by the United Nations in 2015, thus explicitly aim at advancing policy coherence and institutional integration among the myriad international institutions. Yet, have these goals been effective in this regard? We assess here the impact of the Sustainable Development Goals on the network structure of 276 international organizations in the period 2012–2019, that is, four years before and four years after the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals. The network structure was approximated by analyzing data from the websites of these 276 international organizations that were joined by more than 1.5 million hyperlinks, which we collected using a custom-made web crawler. Our findings are contrary to what is widely expected from the Sustainable Development Goals: we find that fragmentation has in fact increased after the Sustainable Development Goals came into effect. In addition, silos are increasing around the 17 SDGs as well as around the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.

Engaging the Public and the Private in Global Sustainability Governance

<p>"How do you build a sustainable house in New Zealand? - is it even possible?" This thesis is structured in three parts to answer this question. The first part asks, then answers, "What is sustainability?", "How do you measure sustainability?" and "How do you know when you have reached sustainability - what is its limit?" The second part describes the methodologies for conducting embodied energy and CO2 analysis. The third part applies the results of the sustainability definition, and the energy and CO2 methodologies to a series of house designs. Part 1 defines, measures, and establishes a limit for sustainability. It reviews the history of sustainability and sustainable development. A distillation of what is being sought by the various parties to the sustainability debate then contributes to a checklist of essential requirements for a functional definition of sustainability. Addressing climate change is shown to be the major requirement. The checklist enables answers to the questions about measuring sustainability, and knowing when its limit has been reached, and leads to a functional definition: Sustainability meets the needs of the present without annual CO2 emissions exceeding what the planet can absorb. The requirements for sustainability indicator methods are examined. A robust way of comparing environment impacts is introduced. Several common sustainability indicators are examined against the requirements, but are found wanting, while two are found to be effective: energy and CO2 analysis. Human population and annual global carbon absorption are used to identify global and per-capita sustainability limits, which can be applied at many scales to many activities. They are applied to New Zealand's housing sector to identify a sustainable annual per-house emissions target, including construction, maintenance, and operation. Part 2 reviews the methodologies to measure and delimit sustainability using embodied energy and embodied CO2 analysis. A new, fast, accurate, and reliable process-based hybrid analysis method developed for this research is used to derive embodied energy and CO2 coefficients for building materials. Part 3 applies the results of the sustainability definition and limit, and the energy and CO2 methodologies and coefficients from analysing building materials, to a series of house designs within New Zealand and global contexts. A spreadsheet-based calculator developed for this analysis that has potential beyond this thesis is described. A method is presented for annualising emissions to fairly account for differing building components' lifetimes. Finally, a sustainable house is shown to be possible by combining several strategies to meet the challenging sustainable emissions target. Technologies that reduce grid electricity use - solar hot water, PV, and wind-generators - are crucial, cutting emissions the most. Bio-based materials sequestering carbon are the second most important strategy: strawbale insulation to ~R10, and timber for framing, cladding, windows, linings, and roofing. Efficient appliances, lighting, and other low-emission materials were also helpful. Other key outcomes were: hot water heating emits the most CO2, double any other category; heating energy emissions are smaller than any other category; CO2-optimal conventional insulation levels are ~R5; CO2 flux of materials is double operating energy CO2 for sustainable houses.</p>

<p>"How do you build a sustainable house in New Zealand? - is it even possible?" This thesis is structured in three parts to answer this question. The first part asks, then answers, "What is sustainability?", "How do you measure sustainability?" and "How do you know when you have reached sustainability - what is its limit?" The second part describes the methodologies for conducting embodied energy and CO2 analysis. The third part applies the results of the sustainability definition, and the energy and CO2 methodologies to a series of house designs. Part 1 defines, measures, and establishes a limit for sustainability. It reviews the history of sustainability and sustainable development. A distillation of what is being sought by the various parties to the sustainability debate then contributes to a checklist of essential requirements for a functional definition of sustainability. Addressing climate change is shown to be the major requirement. The checklist enables answers to the questions about measuring sustainability, and knowing when its limit has been reached, and leads to a functional definition: Sustainability meets the needs of the present without annual CO2 emissions exceeding what the planet can absorb. The requirements for sustainability indicator methods are examined. A robust way of comparing environment impacts is introduced. Several common sustainability indicators are examined against the requirements, but are found wanting, while two are found to be effective: energy and CO2 analysis. Human population and annual global carbon absorption are used to identify global and per-capita sustainability limits, which can be applied at many scales to many activities. They are applied to New Zealand's housing sector to identify a sustainable annual per-house emissions target, including construction, maintenance, and operation. Part 2 reviews the methodologies to measure and delimit sustainability using embodied energy and embodied CO2 analysis. A new, fast, accurate, and reliable process-based hybrid analysis method developed for this research is used to derive embodied energy and CO2 coefficients for building materials. Part 3 applies the results of the sustainability definition and limit, and the energy and CO2 methodologies and coefficients from analysing building materials, to a series of house designs within New Zealand and global contexts. A spreadsheet-based calculator developed for this analysis that has potential beyond this thesis is described. A method is presented for annualising emissions to fairly account for differing building components' lifetimes. Finally, a sustainable house is shown to be possible by combining several strategies to meet the challenging sustainable emissions target. Technologies that reduce grid electricity use - solar hot water, PV, and wind-generators - are crucial, cutting emissions the most. Bio-based materials sequestering carbon are the second most important strategy: strawbale insulation to ~R10, and timber for framing, cladding, windows, linings, and roofing. Efficient appliances, lighting, and other low-emission materials were also helpful. Other key outcomes were: hot water heating emits the most CO2, double any other category; heating energy emissions are smaller than any other category; CO2-optimal conventional insulation levels are ~R5; CO2 flux of materials is double operating energy CO2 for sustainable houses.</p>

The recent shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the much broader Sustainable Development Goals has given further impetus to the debate on the nexus between the multiple sectors of policy-making that the Goals are to cover. The key message in this debate is that different domains—for instance, water, energy and food—are interconnected and can thus not be effectively resolved unless they are addressed as being fully interrelated and interdependent. Yet while this overall narrative is forcefully supported in the new UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that are the main part of this agenda, many Goals still remain sectoral in their basic outlook. This now requires, we argue, a new focus in both policy and research on the nexus between different Sustainable Development Goals, especially with a view to reforms in the overall institutional setting that is required to sufficiently support such a nexus approach. This article thus examines the nexus approach in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals and identifies multiple avenues for its institutionalisation in global governance.

An examination of three major trends in global governance, exemplified by developments in transnational environmental rule-setting. The notion of global governance is widely studied in academia and increasingly relevant to politics and policy making. Yet many of its fundamental elements remain unclear in both theory and practice. This book offers a fresh perspective by analyzing global governance in terms of three major trends, as exemplified by developments in global sustainability governance: the emergence of nonstate actors; new mechanisms of transnational cooperation; and increasingly segmented and overlapping layers of authority. The book, which is the synthesis of a ten-year “Global Governance Project” carried out by thirteen leading European research institutions, first examines new nonstate actors, focusing on international bureaucracies, global corporations, and transnational networks of scientists; then investigates novel mechanisms of global governance, particularly transnational environmental regimes, public-private partnerships, and market-based arrangements; and, finally, looks at fragmentation of authority, both vertically among supranational, international, national, and subnational layers, and horizontally among different parallel rule-making systems. The implications, potential, and realities of global environmental governance are defining questions for our generation. This book distills key insights from the past and outlines the most important research challenges for the future.

Sustainable development has become a central paradigm in global policy and academic discourse, but its successful implementation depends heavily on the interplay between local initiatives and international governance frameworks. This paper explores how collaborative governance in Poland provides meaningful contributions to global sustainability objectives. By examining concrete Polish examples, the study highlights the mechanisms through which local actions—when supported by inclusive decision-making, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and institutional innovation—can generate a global impact. The research draws on case studies of Polish municipalities, civil society organizations, and businesses that have adopted collaborative approaches to environmental protection, social inclusion, and economic resilience. Examples include participatory budgeting initiatives in major Polish cities that empower local communities to co-create sustainable urban solutions; cooperative renewable energy projects, such as energy clusters, that align local economic development with climate goals; and partnerships between local governments and NGOs addressing biodiversity preservation in Natura 2000 areas. These cases demonstrate how decentralized governance fosters innovation, trust, and accountability, while also feeding into broader European and global sustainability strategies like the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper argues that collaborative governance is not merely a managerial tool but a transformative process that bridges different levels of policy-making. In Poland, this approach has proven particularly relevant in areas where national regulations intersect with EU directives, creating opportunities for adaptive governance and knowledge exchange. The findings suggest that local actors, when empowered through participatory frameworks, can shape policy agendas beyond their immediate communities. Moreover, the analysis underscores the importance of cultural and institutional context: Poland’s strong tradition of local self-governance, reinforced after the democratic transition of 1989, provides fertile ground for bottom-up sustainability efforts. However, challenges remain, including uneven resource distribution, political polarization, and the need for capacity-building at the municipal level. In conclusion, the paper contends that Poland’s experiences offer valuable lessons for other countries seeking to link grassroots initiatives with global sustainability agendas. By fostering collaborative governance, local actions can transcend geographical boundaries, contributing not only to national development but also to the collective pursuit of a more sustainable and equitable world.