Toward a Multi-level Action Framework for Sustainable Development

needs of Africa.” Formulating them as a simple, memorable, and concise set of goals inevitably left other issues out. As Fukuda-Parr (2014) points out, the Millennium Development Goals encountered “unintended consequences” in diverting attention from other important issues and objectives. Still other critiques go to the nature of the targets. As the Millennium Development Goals were formulated around the idea of results-based management, issues such as human rights, equality, and governance effectiveness, where measuring progress is difficult or controversial, were not included (Alston 2005; Hulme 2007; Nelson 2007; Vandemoortele and Delamonica 2010; Browne 2014). Even in the case of included targets, purported causal connections between the Millennium Development Goals and measures of progress turned out to be questionable. For example, some argue that many ostensible achievements, especially on economic and poverty targets, owe substantially more to the economic boom in emerging economies during the period covered by the Millennium Development Goals, especially in China (Andresen and Iguchi, this volume, chapter 7).

Integrating Economic, Social, and Environmental Policies Despite the fact that the new Sustainable Development Goals ostensibly replace the Millennium Development Goals—and as such explicitly incorporate and continue the pursuit of their core aim of ending poverty— the Millennium Development Goals are not the starting point of our conceptual discussions in this book. In our view, the Sustainable Development Goals constitute a fundamentally different approach to global problems that recognizes the interdependence of human societies and socio-ecological systems (Young et al., this volume, chapter 3). The purpose of the Sustainable Development Goals is to capture the interconnections between issues; that is, they encourage integrative and systemic approaches to global problems.

This is a vital difference. There is growing evidence that the earth system has entered a new epoch—the Anthropocene—in which humans now essentially shape planetary systems (Young et al., this volume, chapter 3). Humanity has become a systematic influence on natural systems, and human systems cannot be meaningfully disentangled from the natural ones on which they rely for vital resources. Given this historical transition and systemic transformation, chapter 3 engages the possibility of developing and institutionalizing a Grundnorm (“basic norm”) of sustainability to underpin the Sustainable Development Goals. It would rest on some notion