Sustainable development goals (SDG): a view from the Andean altiplano, Latin America

Résumé fourni par la source

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda has 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are “an urgent call for action by all countries”. Each of the 17 SDGs has a corresponding icon and a brief description of its targets. The 17 SDGs have a total of 169 targets, whose iconography was produced by Project Everyone, a UN Global Partner for SDG Advocacy and Outreach. In the present study, as a member of a research group in Latin America studying camelids and their herders (members of the indigenous communities of the Andean altiplano), I analyzed the elements present in the icons of these 169 SDG targets, with particular attention to landscape and biodiversity components. I found a total of 154 elements representing these natural world components, including plants (71), animals (61), fungi (4), and landscape components (18), which in turn included mountains with glaciers, the sea and sea bottom, and rivers. Only one icon, the icon of a corn variety, was distinctive as being from Latin America. I also found that several of the icons were not representative of the Andean altiplano, depicting biodiversity and elements unrelated to their territories, communities, or livelihoods. Thus, considering that the iconography of the SDG targets has almost no representation of this specific region, I undertook a visual adaptation exercise and decided to redesign some of the icons, aiming to reflect the regional Andean altiplano identity, plants, animals, and landscape. The result of this adaptation exercise is not an alternative endorsed by the UN or Project Everyone and needs to be endorsed by local communities. Finally, I discuss the importance of defending the 2030 Agenda from a critical stance from the Global South, understanding that the goals are universal but also that they should be differentiated in country or regional contexts.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.