Global Justice in the Anthropocene: The Fourth Pillar Debate in Sustainable Development

DOI IR

Abstract

The three main pillars of sustainable development —economic, social, and environmental— have been formed and reconfirmed in the 40 years since the 1972 UN Conference on Human Development. Many concerned people anticipated a fourth pillar that could have created a momentum for transformative change at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). However, a fourth pillar has yet to be clearly articulated. I argue that the fourth pillar is governance, or an institutional framework based on global ethics in the Anthropocene, which is a newly proposed chronological term in geology that refers to the epoch in which human activities are causing global environmental instability. To facilitate the establishment of the fourth pillar, it is suggested that the currently negotiated Sustainable Development Goals should reflect global justice in the Anthropocene in a way that balances all three dimensions of sustainable development and their linkages. An institutional framework for sustainable development and global peace should also be reconstructed to facilitate the transformational integration of these pillars.

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