What role for culture in the age of sustainable development? UNESCO’s advocacy in the 2030 Agenda negotiations

ABSTRACT

The article presents the nuanced role of culture in the sustainable development agenda of the United Nations, highlighting the contribution of UNESCO. While UNESCO has been engaged in the intersections between culture and development since 1980s, when the World Decade for Cultural Development was proclaimed, it was only with the negotiation of post-2015 development framework that culture began to enter the mainstream development discourse. It is argued that this process, influenced by both external and internal factors, has led to the reconceptualisation of the culture-development nexus. While the role of culture in the human development paradigm was focused on poverty alleviation and other human needs, including identity, education, and health, the sustainability agenda significantly widens the possible roles for cultural factors. UNESCO’s three approaches are discussed: culture as a unique dimension of sustainable development, and culture as a driver and enabler of sustainability.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable development goals
• UNESCO
• culture and development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On the differences between the MDGs and SDGs see e.g. Carant (2017), or Fukuda-Parr (2016).

2. It consisted of: Albania, Argentina, Barbados, Bangladesh, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, Mongolia, Nepal, Peru, Republic of Korea, Senegal, Qatar, Tunisia, Turkey and Vietnam (Vlassis 2015, 1654).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach

Dobrosława Wiktor-Mach works at the Department of European Studies at the University of Economics in Cracow (Poland), where she teaches international relations and sociology. In 2017 she was a research fellow at the Center for the History of Global Development at Shanghai University. She is a member of the European Sociological Association and her research focuses on socio-cultural dimensions of development in the Middle East (in particular Turkey), sustainable development and on contemporary Islam.