Promoting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in IJSDWE

It is now almost five years since the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Under this agenda, the international communities envisioned more sustainable future for the planet and for its people. Many countries have been using the 17 SDGs as a central framework for guiding development policies and practices. Progress has been made in every aspect of the 17 SDGs during the first five years through a broad range of collaborative efforts, including contributions from the scientific and academic community. For example, extreme poverty has declined considerably, marine protected areas have doubled since 2010, and forest areas for soil and water conservation have been increased globally in the last 25 years (FAO 2018).

The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology (IJSDWE) is a multidisciplinary forum for understanding, communicating and advancing our knowledge and the implementation of sustainable development. The aims and scopes of IJSDWE include the subject areas related to the 17 SDGs as a priority for selecting and publishing papers in the journal. The publications in IJSDWE have well covered the first 13 SDGs in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development before and after 2015 (Table 1). Interestingly, the most cited papers within these 13 SDGs were all published before 2015, suggesting that IJSDWE authors have foreseen the importance of the contents in UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and IJSDWE has continued to play an active role in promoting the 2030 Agenda since its launch in 2015.

Table 1. The number of publications by IJSDWE corresponding to the first 13 SDGs.

The first 13 SDGs	Keyword	Number of Publications in IJSDWE	The Most Cited Paper within Each SDG
Goal 1: No Poverty	poverty	72	Hope (2009)
Goal 2: Zero Hunger	hung* or starv* or (‘food shortage’)	5	Ghate (2003)
Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being	health or well-being	111	Hansmann et al. (2012)
Goal 4: Quality Education	education	83	Hansmann et al. (2012)
Goal 5: Gender Equality	gender or female or women	41	Carr et al. (2007)
Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation	‘water quality’ or sanitation	32	Wu et al. (2008)
Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy	energy	151	Verstraete and Vlaeminck (2011)
Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth	‘economic growth’	74	Ness (2008)
Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure	industry or innovation or infrastructure	175	Salvati and Sabbi (2011)
Goal 10: Reduced Inequality	inequality	16	Carr et al. (2007)
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities	cities or communit*	381	Cetin (2015)
Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production	consumption or production	261	Fernandez-Gimenez and Le Febre (2006)
Goal 13: Climate Action	climate	137	Naustdalslid (2011)

Among the top seven highly cited web-science papers with the keywords of 2030 agenda, Leal Filho et al. (2018) illustrated a critical role of interdisciplinary research on sustainable development at the local level in better meeting society’s needs, promoting decisions on a broader scale, serving society, in forming stakeholders, and linking science with policymaking. The interdisciplinary approach is particularly helpful for the implementation of the 17 SDGs, which requires government agencies, the private sectors, and civil societies to act together and put innovations into practice (Scown et al. 2019). From this point of view, IJSDWE promotes communications among various stakeholders of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

While education on sustainability involves major challenges, the importance of education for sustainable development cannot be overlooked (Rampasso et al. 2019). Indeed, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly mentions the word education 21 times. IJSDWE has so far published articles with the keyword of education 83 times. Specifically, the education publications increased to 9 articles in 2018 and 11 articles in 2019 from only 1–5 articles per year prior in 1997–2017. Shulla et al. (2020) reveal that education for sustainable development is strongly interconnected with the SDGs 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 15. IJSDWE is particularly effective for promoting education for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through publishing the theories, methods, and case studies of sustainable development.

The founding of IJSDWE was inspired by the initial concept of sustainable development proposed by World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. As the primary focus of the journal, the topics of sustainable development continue to include environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, and/or social and cultural sustainability. On either research or education aspect, IJSDWE continues to serve as a platform for improving the theory and practice of sustainable development through publishing the 17 SDGs-related works. As the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development continues to make progress, IJSDWE will expand the publications of successful case studies related to the 17 SDGs. At the same time, there are many areas intersecting the 17 SDGs that need urgent collective attention (Sachs et al. 2019). To accelerate progress towards the SDGs, IJSDWE welcomes contributions from all the relevant stakeholders of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The enriched author community of IJSDWE is expected to continue playing an active role in promoting the 2030 Agenda in the next ten years.