The New Sustainable Development Agenda: An Introduction to Measurement and Conceptualisation

Abstract

This chapter traces both the intellectual foundations and practical applications of contemporary ideas relating to sustainability and development. Setting the scene for the rest of the book, it explores key contemporary intellectual framings of development, focusing on the renewed prominence bestowed upon the phrase 'sustainable development' internationally , given the unveiling of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the centrepiece of the UN's 2030 development agenda. A more critical exploration, it is argued, must occur if scholars and students of sustainable development are to examine the constitutive role of measuring mechanisms, indicators and metrics in the political realm of sustainability, a field quickly moving down the track of abstraction, quantification and 'neoliberalisation'.