The sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While the MDGs focused on improving well-being in the developing world, the 17 SDGs address all countries and aim at reconciling economic and social with ecological goals. We adopt a social ecology perspective and critically reflect on the SDGs’ potential for monitoring, supporting, and bringing about a transformation towards sustainability. Starting from a literature review on the SDGs, we link empirical findings from social ecology with analyses of SDG targets and indicators. First, we find that the SDGs fail to monitor absolute trends in resource use and thus prioritize economic growth over ecological integrity. Second, we discuss the contradictions between economic growth and sustainable resource use in early and late stages of industrialization processes and show that they are responsible for important trade-offs among SDG targets. Third, we analyze the transformative potential of the SDGs with a focus on the actors and institutions addressed to bring about transformative change. We find that the SDGs rely mainly on those institutions responsible for unsustainable resource use, and partly propose measures that even reinforce current trends towards less sustainability. Despite ascertaining limited transformative potential to the SDGs from an analytical perspective, we conclude by stressing the strategic relevance of the SDGs for visions, research, and practices of statt towards transformative change towards sustainability.

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ABSTRACT:We highlight the importance of island research that aims to achieve sustainability transitions. All too often, developmental priorities are largely defined by economic policy imperatives, and island research either ignores or masks such normative connotations. This article reports on ten years of transdisciplinary socioecological research on the Greek island of Samothraki. We sequentially: (i) introduce socioecological thinking and the conceptual framework of social ecology, and show how this is operationalised and applied on this case study, and (ii) highlight the importance of a transdisciplinary research approach, in promoting island sustainability. We conclude with a plea for more transformative research and citizen research in the direction of sustainability within island studies.

Sedentary extensive small ruminant farming systems are highly important for the preservation of High Nature Value (HNV) farmland. Both the abandonment of grazing and overgrazing have led to environmental degradation in many Mediterranean regions. On the Greek island of Samothrace, decades of overgrazing by sheep and goats has caused severe degradation of local ecosystems. The present study highlights the importance of regional contexts for national and EU agricultural policies in regard to sustainable development of sedentary extensive livestock systems. By utilizing the conceptual framework of socio-ecological systems research, we analyze the interdependencies of environmental, economic and social factors on a local island level. Results show that between 1929 and 2016, the livestock and land-use system of Samothrace transformed from a diverse system towards a simplified system, solely used for small ruminant production. Total livestock units increased from 2200 in 1929 to 7850 in 2002, declining to 5100 thereafter. The metabolic analysis conducted for the years 1993–2016 shows that 80–90% of the feed demand of small ruminants was covered by grazing, exceeding available grazing resources for at least a decade. The regional implementation of CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) continues to support excessively high animal numbers, while farmers are highly dependent on subsidies and find themselves in an economic deadlock.