Oslo SDG Blog - Page 4

What does literature have to do with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This question can be answered in many ways, and literary scholars can provide a wide range of different responses. Literary fiction often addresses the most pressing and current issues, and so, literature can, and does, tell a great variety of stories mirroring the problems that we face today. However, literature is not only about what it tells, but also about how it tells it. As is clear from debates on climate change or the range of topics discussed in the current US presidential campaign, how we communicate to the rest of the world certainly affects what we do. In this blog, I would like to focus on one specific way that literary fiction can contribute to achieving the SDGs, namely through exploring the workings of our minds.

There are numerous well-intentioned global efforts and development agendas and a multitude of stakeholders involved in saving lives as well as promoting long-term development in many developing countries. But what characterizes the relationship between good intentions and actually achieved results? How well are such activities coordinated? How effectively can external actors make a meaningful contribution to alleviating local problems? And most importantly, whose priorities do such interventions address, and to what extent are the so-called “beneficiaries” consulted?

In March and April 2020, an ecosystem of tracing apps suddenly emerged, presenting digital solutions as indispensable for winning the battle against Covid-19. 

This blog critically assesses the potential of legal tech for improving access to civil justice as measured by the new Sustainable Development Goals indicator 16.3.3.

'Critical junctures' are the scandals, crises or conflicts that can throw the status quo and power relations into the air, opening the door to previously unthinkable reforms. In Plagues and the Paradox of Progress, Thomas Bolloky argues that such events include health shocks: 'Encounters with infectious disease have played a key role in the evolution of cities, the expansion of trade routes, the conduct of war and participation in pilgrimages'.