The GLOBALGOALS Project invites you to GLOBALGOALS2024 - The Future of the SDGs, an international research conference to be held on 29-30 August 2024 in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Achieving worldwide sustainable development remains the biggest political challenge of our time. In 2015, the international community adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals with no less than 169 ‘targets’ as part of a global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The ambition expressed in these goals is unprecedented. But can such goal-setting, as a new central approach in global governance, help resolve the pressing challenges of economic development, poverty eradication, social justice and global environmental protection? Nobody knows at this stage. While the United Nations and its member states place high hopes on this novel strategy, there is little scientific knowledge on whether such global goals can live up to exceedingly high expectations.

Sustainability research has tended to focus on concrete institutions, actors and practices – not on aspirational goals that bring little in terms of normative specificity, stable regime formation or compliance mechanisms.

How can global governance through goals nonetheless be effective – and under which conditions? GLOBALGOALS was designed to address this research question, breaking new ground in sustainability and global governance theories.