Abstract
Sustainable development requires environmental, social and economic dimensions to be addressed simultaneously and in an integrated manner. This paper evaluates the degree of balance between these three dimensions in ten major proposals for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposals were chosen for detailed review and evaluated in terms of coverage and interlinkages between goals, using a methodology that evaluated the frequency of keyword use associated with each issue area. Our analysis found that none of the proposals was completely comprehensive, that they tended to emphasize issues related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), rather than planetary well-being and other issues, and that the Open Working Group outcome was comparatively well balanced. In addition, the inter-governmental proposals tended to cover a broader range of issues than research-led ones. This is because discussions in an international setting bring together views from multiple governments, which can ultimately lead to wider coverage of the issues, although this does not guarantee that they will be addressed in an integrated manner. As the SDGs are expected to be formulated at the national level, the challenge is to fully integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development so as to devise actions on the SDGs appropriately in order to achieve the transformation toward sustainability.
