Social foundation for long-term sustainability| Jing Li

Field l Discipline

• Sustainable development
• Climate change
• Social policy

Expertise

• Social science with quantitative methods
• Environmental sociology

Summary

In defining sustainability, there has been a growing consensus and development of frameworks. The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals provides an overarching global framework for countries to follow. However, many argue that these goals are not comprehensive or sufficient to achieve long-term sustainability. A key issue in achieving global sustainable development is how to build social foundations within planetary boundaries. Among the three pillars of sustainability, the social dimension has gained relatively less attention than other pillars.  The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other frameworks have conceptualized multiple social dimensions of sustainability. Recent studies have focused on whether indicators or thresholds are being met in countries and regions. However, there remains substantial inconsistency across frameworks in terms of definitions, indicators and thresholds. An holistic analysis of related frameworks is still lacking. I am now doing the first part of my project, which is a systematic literature review on social indicators that define and link ‘’well-being’, ‘quality of life’ and sustainability. With the outcome of the review, I aim to identify social indicators that are necessary for a ‘good life’ and human well-being at different scales My study would also provide insights to make the social imension of sustainability more comprehensive and inclusive within the planetary boundaries.

This research is part of the project: BeyondSDG, Transformation towards long-term sustainability beyond Sustainable Development Goals (2023-2028).

Supervision by

• Promotor: Prof. dr. K.S. (Klaus) Hubacek | Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society - IREES | ESRIG, University of Groningen.
• Co-promotor:  Dr. P. (Prajal) Pradhan | Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society -IREES | ESRIG, University of Groningen.

More information and contact details can be found on the personal profile of Jing Li