Perspectives on Sustainable Development Goals: Science to Policy Framework―Cases and Lessons from India

The seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out a blueprint for addressing global challenges facing humanity, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set out a blueprint for addressing global challenges facing humanity, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. This is a bold envisioning, but envisioning requires on-the-ground fulfilment. Developing countries face many structural constraints in achieving the SDGs, and working practical ways around these roadblocks is critical to the goal of sustainable development. This volume looks at case studies from across India that show both victories and perils of work undertaken to achieve the SDGs. The book’s editors and most of its chapter authors are geographers, but the cases here are interdisciplinary. The book’s remit is broad and features cases on topics as diverse as gender equality, human health, urban development, and explicit policymaking. Though the problems and solutions described here all take place in the context of India, the lessons here are certainly transferable to other countries and contexts.