Replacing Sustainable Development: Potential Frameworks for International Cooperation in an Era of Increasing Crises and Disasters

Reviewing international cooperation on social and environmental change, and particularly the failure to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, Jem Bendell argues that the Sustainable Development framework is unable to address the increasing crises and disasters faced by the world today. As an alternative, he proposes an upgraded form of Disaster Risk Management that is detached from economic ideologies, includes a new eco-social contract between citizen and state, which recognizes the potential for a wider meta-disaster from climate chaos, and thus emphasizes self-reliant resilience and locally led adaptation.