In 2015, the United Nations established seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that aimed 'to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all' by 2030. The chapters within this collection address each of these SDGs, considering how they relate to one another and international law, and what institutions could aid their implementation. Development has been a contentious topic since the decolonization period after World War II, and issues surrounding sustainable development are necessarily impacted by the multifaceted relationship between the Global South and Global North. Confronting the context and challenge of sustainable development, this collection outlines how the international economic system problematizes the attainment of the SDGs. Introducing a novel, cosmopolitan approach, this book offers new ways of understanding sustainable development and suggests potential solutions so that we might finally achieve it.

Despite the global endorsement of the Sustainable Development Goals, environmental justice struggles are growing all over the world. These struggles are not isolated injustices, but symptoms of interlocking forms of oppression that privilege the few while inflicting misery on the many and threatening ecological collapse. This handbook offers critical perspectives on the multi-dimensional, intersectional nature of environmental injustice and the cross-cutting forms of oppression that unite and divide these struggles, including gender, race, poverty, and indigeneity. The work sheds new light on the often-neglected social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice. Using a variety of legal frameworks and case studies from around the world, this volume illustrates the importance of overcoming the fragmentation of these legal frameworks and social movements in order to develop holistic solutions that promote justice and protect the planet's ecosystems at a time of intensifying economic and ecological crisis.

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) play an increasingly prominent role in addressing global development challenges. United Nations agencies and other organizations are relying on PPPs to improve global health, facilitate access to scientific information, and encourage the diffusion of climate change technologies. For this reason, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights their centrality in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, the intellectual property dimensions and implications of these efforts remain under-examined. Through selective case studies, this illuminating work contributes to a better understanding of the relationships between PPPs and intellectual property considered within a global knowledge governance framework, that includes innovation, capacity-building, technological learning, and diffusion. Linking global governance of knowledge via intellectual property to the SDGs, this is the first book to chart the activities of PPPs at this important nexus.

The emerging field of corporate law, corporate governance and sustainability is one of the most dynamic and significant areas of law and policy in light of the convergence of environmental, social and economic crises that we face as a global society. Understanding the impact of the corporation on society and realizing its potential for contributing to sustainability is vital for the future of humanity. This Handbook comprehensively assesses the state-of-the-art in this field through in-depth discussion of sustainability-related problems, numerous case studies on regulatory responses implemented by jurisdictions around the world, and analyses of predominant strategies and potential drivers of change. This Handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, practitioners, policymakers, and general readers interested in how corporate law and governance have exacerbated global society's most pressing challenges, and how reforms to these fields can help us resolve those challenges and achieve sustainability.

Considers how to implement children's rights in the twenty-first century through a child rights-based approach to sustainable development.

The 2002 New Delhi Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to Sustainable Development set out seven principles on sustainable development, as agreed in treaties and soft-law instruments from before the 1992 Rio ‘Earth Summit’ UNCED, to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, to the 2012 Rio UNCSD. Recognition of the New Delhi principles is shaping the decisions of dispute settlement bodies with jurisdiction over many subjects: the environment, human rights, trade, investment, and crime, among others. This book explores the expanding international jurisprudence incorporating principles of international law on sustainable development. Through chapters by respected experts, the volume documents the application and interpretation of these principles, demonstrating how courts and tribunals are contributing to the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, by peacefully resolving disputes. It charts the evolution of these principles in international law from soft law standards towards recognition as customary law in certain instances, assessing key challenges to further judicial consideration of the principles, and discussing, for instance, how their relevance for compliance and disputes related to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. The volume provides a unique contribution of great interest to law and policy-makers, judges, academics, students, civil society and practitioners concerned with sustainable development and the law, globally.

"The Cambridge Handbook on the Sustainable Development Goals and International Law was sparked by our curiosity about how a remarkable set of global policy goals for a wide range of areas - the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, might relate to and influence international law. We also asked ourselves how could the relevant areas of international law promote or hamper the achievement of the SDGs and the overarching aim of attaining sustainable development? To explore this further, we engaged colleagues who were willing to join us on this exciting journey, and we thank them for their most insightful contributions to this volume. The chapters in this Handbook highlight the multifaceted relationship between the SDGs and international law as well as how international law might need to change in order to support the achievement of the SDGs and the realization of sustainable development. Our journey towards this result turned out to be bumpier than expected, given the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of us needed to turn to online teaching, some faced other setbacks, and the three-day workshop, originally planned for June 2020 in Stockholm, was cancelled. What had been planned as an author's retreat to exchange ideas and further develop first drafts of the chapters - at Stockholm University and at the Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Vitterhetsakademien) - had to be turned into an online workshop. While regretting that we could not meet in person, the two-day online workshop was a vibrant occasion for exchanging ideas and active collaboration. All the authors engaged enthusiastically and with creativity and humour. Taking into account the almost twenty hours of time difference between participants as well as the drawbacks of an online environment, the workshop was remarkably fun and fruitful and achieved more than we could have wished for. We have now completed this exciting journey, including a couple of "intellectual roller coaster" moments, and we are delighted with the result"--