ABSTRACT
The social and political environment in which policy responses to the trends must be made is a difficult one. It is defined by globalization and rapid technological change, which are mutually reinforcing and create a set of conditions that shortens the necessary response time for policy, restricts national policy options, and possibly exacerbates distributional inequality and ecological damage. This chapter focuses on the challenge of meeting human needs in a sustainable and equitable way, given these social and political conditions. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed to improve capacity to assess and design a sustainable future. The SDGs consist of seventeen interconnected goals, including climate change, economic inequality, sustainable consumption, and peace and justice, all with targets to be met by 2030. In order to create a more sustainable society, resolving the root causes of diverse issues such as consumerism, growing inequalities, and changing employment opportunities is extremely difficult.
