The first antropocene utopia

Abstract

This article proposes an aggiornamento of the "sustainable development" ideal. It addresses four controversial terms, which enable us to foresee that "sustainable development" will very likely become the first utopia of the Anthropocene epoch. Taking into account the Agenda 2030, if the decision criteria are based on the rhetoric of international relations, particularly as used within the framework of the United Nations, it can certainly be concluded that sustainable development has already become the great contemporary utopia. However, if global governance is used as the criterion, this may not be the case, since environmental governance institutions are not yet comparable to development governance institutions. Strictly speaking, there is no global governance of sustainability, unless this notion is restricted to environmental issues.