Unsustainable development goals

More than halfway between their proposal and the 2030 deadline for their achievement, none of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is on track to be attained. Meanwhile, we are increasingly crossing planetary boundaries and nearing tipping points of global environmental change. Failure is inevitable because solutions to the crisis cannot come from the same anthropocentric world-view that has created it. The growth of an already supersized consumerist economy and human population is incompatible with long-term functioning ecosystems, but it is precisely this unsustainable perspective that permeates the SDGs. Its rejection in favour of one that has the planetary ecosystem at its heart is urgent and crucial to rebalance life on Earth, prevent further environmental destruction, slow the pace of climate change, and rapidly reduce inequality and injustice within humanity and across the biosphere.