Kolb-Localizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: A Spotlight on Djibouti

Αρετή (Arete) Journal of Excellence in Global Leadership | Vol. 1 No. 1 | 2022

highlighting factors that set Djibouti apart and the challenges facing the country. The political geography of Djibouti offers an intriguing case for SDG realization, expanding the current body of country-specific literature and the ever-expanding body of research pertaining to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Background The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us that we share progress and crises as a planet. Research continues to support the interconnectedness and dependence humans have on each other as well as on the planet we inhabit. Human success relies on global progress and sustainability. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted to drive needed change toward sustainability and have become the standard by which to base and measure international development (Willis & Kumar, 2020). This study aims to explore the challenges of realizing the SDGs in Djibouti. United Nations 2030 Agenda In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly updated the Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2022b). This change reflected a shift from development as a form of alleviating world poverty to a broader and more holistic agenda connecting human well-being and progress to preservation, protection, and health of the planet. The United Nations document, “Tra nsforming the World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” outlined the seventeen goals containing 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. The goals reflect the complex interdependency of social, economic, and environmental parameters to achieve sustainability, in turn providing a framework to measure each country’s efforts toward social progress (Mabee et al., 2020; Willis & Kumar, 2020). Within the 169 targets, there are 232 measurable indicators that provide guidelines for tracking progress and for the collection of data related to SDG implementation (see United Nations, [2022a] for the complete list of indicators). However, global political, economic, and geographical inequalities engender challenges to implementing universal agendas such as the SDGs. The UN agenda has therefore been the topic of research and scrutiny within multiple disciplines and fields. By design, the agenda lacks specific guidelines for implementation. It merely indicates that individual governments are responsible for realizing the SDGs (Jönsson & Bexell, 2020). Due to these highly generalized guidelines, the 2030 agenda has received criticism for being elite (Jönsson & Bexell, 2021), for not addressing leadership roles (Guha & Chakrabarti, 2019), and for failing to take into consideration the differing needs due to global inequalities (Willis & Kumar, 2020). Jönsson and Bexell (2021), answered the call to research listed in Oldekop et al. (2016) by investigating drivers and obstacles impacting local governances’ ability to implement the SDG targets in Tanzania. Their findings offered a framework for the roles, responsibilities, and effective implementation of the UN SDGs. The 2030 Agenda was adopted at a macro-level for global change. However, to achieve global

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