Towards a global agenda of sustainability and equity : civil society engagement for the future We Want - UNEP Perspectives No. 12

At the Rio+20 Summit the United Nations General Assembly (GA) resolved to put in place a set of Sustainable Development Goals (§ 245-251 of “The Future We Want”). For this purpose, an Open Working Group for Sustainable Development Goals was established on 22nd January 2013 by decision 67/555 (see A/67/L.48/rev.1) of the GA. Since that decision, several meetings of the Open Working Group have taken place at which numerous representatives from governments and civil society have expressed the view that the post 2015- and the SDG-framework should be merged into a single process. Although by no means a simple task, the authors of this article are in support of such a merger, arguing it is necessary to fully transform the development agenda, putting environmental sustainability at its core, and avoid the development of “green MDGs” that simply enable business-as-usual.