ABSTRACT
In September 2015, all 193 UN member states successfully adopted the 2030 Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN-Summit in New York. The 2030 Agenda serves as a new global frame of reference for sustainable development until 2030. It covers the three dimensions of sustainable development (social, economic and environmental) in a balanced way and is universally applicable to all countries. Not least due to the very inclusive elaboration phase, the 2030 Agenda can be interpreted as the latest and politically most widely agreed on description of sustainable development. At the same time, the concept of culture seems to have gained relevance in the discussion about sustainable development and some commentators now even see it as the fourth dimension of sustainability, besides the social, economic and environmental ones that are politically accepted. This contribution discusses the concept of culture within the sustainable development discourse at the UN level.
