Friends,
Please see the CFP below. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
Best,
Audra
2016 AAG Annual Meeting
Critical Geographies of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Organizers: Diana Liverman (University of Arizona) and Audra El Vilaly (University of Arizona)
This session aims to curate a set of critical perspectives on the inception and future application of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs).
The goals, set to define the post-2015 development agenda, dovetail on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which framed international development practice between 2000 and 2015. The eight MDGs aimed to benefit the world's poorest populations by tackling poverty, hunger, disease, and child mortality, while improving primary education, gender equality, maternal health, environment sustainability, and global development partnerships. Progress towards the MDGs has varied widely by country. Notwithstanding the impacts achieved, the MDGs have been criticized for their lack of attention to gender disparities, political economic equity, and environmental sustainability - objectives now prioritized by the SDGs.
Newly adopted in September 2015, the SGD’s account for different geographic realities, capacities, and levels of development, and are designed to respect national policies and priorities. Moreover, they are intended to inspire focused and coherent action on sustainable development, and to galvanize the mainstreaming of sustainable development in the UN system. Their overarching objectives include eradicating poverty, rendering consumption and production more sustainable, and protecting and managing natural resources for sustainable development.
But in an era of mounting climate change, war, and dependence on fossil fuels and other natural resources, how, if at all, will the SDG’s mitigate the waxing disparities that are both causes and effects of these catastrophes? More explicitly, how can the SDG’s be rendered useful in attenuating the collateral damage wrought by global capitalism?
Some initial questions that may be addressed by this session are:
What historical conditions and relations led to the inception of the current SDG’s? How did the lessons learned from the the MDG era guide the formulation of the new goals, and what mistakes are they intended to correct? As currently formulated, how, if at all, might the SDG’s help mitigate further social, political economic, and geographic disparities, while also contributing to the more equitable distribution of development’s burdens and benefits?
What assumptions underpin the creation of the new SDG’s? In other words, what ontological commitments do their creators and pursuers hold about the problems and needs of different bodies and their environments; the types of bodies to be included in - and excluded from - sustainable development projects; and the appropriate methods of delivering development, as well as producing and disseminating relevant knowledge among scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers alike?
What are likely to be the challenges, and for whom, of pursuing the new SDG’s, and how might we prepare ourselves to address these challenges? Moreover, what might be the roles of geographers in contributing to a future envisioned by the SDG’s?
How can geographic scholarship on the complex, variable, and oftentimes contradictory relations between theory and praxis, development and devaluation, accumulation and dispossession, consumption and sustainability, poverty and economic growth, and natural resource use and environmental degradation contribute to the planning and enactment of more sustainable and equitable development in different contexts and among different people across the globe?
We invite abstracts for either paper or panel presentations that offer critical perspectives on the MDG’s and/or SDG’s. Please send proposed titles and abstracts of approximately 250 words by Tuesday, October 27, 2015 to: Audra Elisabeth El Vilaly ([log in to unmask]).
We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco.