Introduction

This chapter discusses the multilateral commitments to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as severely compromised by the underlying and largely unacknowledged commitment to growth and modernization and the tacit denial of ecological-economic limits. At the same time, although seriously flawed, it is argued that the SDG framework is the most hopeful and best example of a growing global consensus of the need for action on the environment. However, to function as a framework for policy, the SDGs would need to be adjusted to accommodate the ecological-economic heuristic of biophysical limits and the need for reorientations of individuals as community.