Financial Crises, Poverty and Environmental Sustainability: Challenges in the Context of the SDGs and Covid-19 Recovery

This volume advances the state-of-the-art in the study of the interplay among financial crises, poverty dynamics and environmental sustainability. It offers timely and unique contributions to the immediate global challenge of sustainable development. Developing a new evidence-base, the volume offers concrete recommendations for policy action needed in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to environment and poverty during the current conditions of financial distress. The approach taken is inductive and evidence-driven. Most analysis is based on in-depth case studies that aim to offer a detailed and dynamic picture on how poverty and environmental sustainability interact in specific social contexts and financial crises. In this way the volume aims to generate a wealth of new and concrete evidence that offer a solid foundation to understand the multiple channels through which social and environmental factors interact, and the ways in which this interaction canand should be managed in order to achieve the needed global transition to sustainability.

Broader dynamics that are covered and analysed include the historical legacies of structural adjustment and colonialism; the current debt wave experienced in developing countries; the role of inequality; the significant impact that climate change has on livelihoods and on meeting the SDGs; the new challenge presented by the Covid-19 pandemic for the SDGs; the challenge of sustainable funding for SDGs; and the need for a new eco-social contract. Case-studies examined include Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Zambia, and subregions such as the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Lower Mekong Countries.

The volume is part of a joint initiative by the ‘Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP)’ of the University of Sussex, the ‘UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Action for Sustainable Development Goals’ and the ‘United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)’.The overall aim is to advance a new research programme and foster a better understanding of the multiple, complex and often opposing ways through which the punctuated economic slowdown of financial crises, poverty dynamics and environmental sustainability interact. It also makes novel recommendations into how poverty reduction and environment can work in synergy rather than being antagonistic, especially during financial distress, leading into recommendations directly geared towards achieving the SDGs and beyond.

Dr. Andreas Antoniades is a Senior Lecturer in Global Political Economy, University of Sussex, Principal Investigator of the FCES unit of the ‘Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP)’, and Convenor of the Global Debt Dynamics Initiative. He was previously Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex, and the Athens Centre for International Political Economy at Panteion University in Greece.

Dr. Alexander Antonarakis is a Senior Lecturer in Global Change Ecology, University of Sussex, and co-Principal Investigator of the FCES unit of the ‘Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP)’. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, USA. 

Dr. Isabell Kempf is Head of Bonn Office & Senior Research Coordinator, UNRISD. She leads the UNRISD Bonn Programme on Integrating Knowledge and Capacity Development for the SDGs. Previously, she was co-Director of the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Action based at UNEP in Nairobi. She has 26 years of experience working with the UN, including UNESCO, the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.