۱- Introduction

۲- Origins of sustainable development

۳- Emergence of the SDGs and the competing visions of development

۴- Southern advocacy: three priorities

۵- Conclusions

References

Abstract

With the increasing importance of ‘emerging powers’ in the global economy, questions are raised about the role of developing countries in shaping global norms. The assumption in much of the literature has been to see global norms as originating in the ‘North’ (or the ‘West’). Recent research has begun to challenge this view. This paper contributes to this debate in studying the agency of the South in the adoption of sustainable development as the consensus framework for international development (SDGs). Based on documentary and archival research, interviews with stakeholders, and direct participant observation of the SDG negotiations and consultations, the paper chronicles the ideas originating from the South in the emergence and subsequent evolution of the sustainable development concept and the adoption of the SDGs. We highlight the role of key individuals as norm entrepreneurs at the origin of sustainable development as they challenged the North-led understanding of the environmental challenge in the 1970s and 1980s, and the agency of Southern actors in proposing an alternative vision as a successor to the MDGs. We chronicle the agency of Southern actors in promoting some key priorities of sustainable development. We argue that these ideas originated from the perspective of the knowledge, lived experience, policy experience, theorizing and analysis of the Global South. We find that norm entrepreneurship involved contesting mainstream views and advancing marginalized ideas. The case also illustrates international norm emergence as a long term process of contestation and evolution.

Introduction

The growing economic importance of developing countries has generated debate about the future of global governance, and the role that they play in shaping global institutions and norms. The assumption in much of the International Relations literature on norms has been to see developing countries as passive adopters rather than creators of international norms (Helleiner, 2014, p. 359). Acharya further argues that not only have such ideas been under-recognized, that they are ‘dismissed as radicalism or foolhardiness’, or if occasionally one is accepted, ‘they are dismissed as imitation. If they prove to be creditable, the credit is usually given to the Western training of the person who invented the idea or to his/her Western collaborators, or to Western governments and institutions that backed them. One way or the other a Western origin or connection is found to legitimize the idea.’ (Acharya, 2016, p. 1157) The dominant view of the South as norm takers has begun to be questioned in the recent literature on the role of the South as normative agents, generating new ideas or in promoting and shaping new global norms (see for example papers in recent edited collections such as Gaskarth, 2015; Helleiner, 2014; Weiss & Abdenur, 2014; Weiss & Roy, 2016). Many of these studies show diverse ways in which individuals, groups and states of the South (or ‘non-Western’ or ‘post-colonial’ world) have generated or promoted ideas that influenced global institutions and norms over the decades (Acharya, 2016; Abdenur, 2014; Weiss & Abdenur, 2014; Helleiner, 2014). This paper examines the agency of the South in the emergence of sustainable development as the consensus framework of international development. In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted Transforming Our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015) [hereafter referred to as the SDGs] which established a consensus framework for international development to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were in place between 2000 and 2015.