Sustainable development is crucial to securing the future of humanity. Blockchain as a disruptive technology and a driver for social change has exhibited great potential to promote sustainable practices and help organizations and governments achieve the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Existing literature reviews on blockchain and sustainability often focus only on topics related to a few SDGs. There is a need to consolidate existing results in terms of SDGs and provide a comprehensive overview of the impacts that blockchain technology may have on each SDG. This paper intends to bridge this gap, presenting a tertiary review based on 42 literature reviews, to investigate the relationship between blockchain and sustainability in light of SDGs. The method used is a consensus-based expert elicitation with thematic analysis. The findings include a novel and comprehensive mapping of impact-based interlinkage of blockchain and SDGs and a systematic overview of drivers and barriers to adopting blockchain for sustainability. The findings reveal that blockchain can have a positive impact on all 17 SDGs though some negative effects can occur and impede the achievement of certain objectives. 76 positive and 10 negative linkages between blockchain adoption and the 17 SDGs as well as 45 factors that drive or hinder blockchain adoption for the achievement of SDGs have been identified. Research gaps to overcome the barriers and enhance blockchain's positive impacts have also been identified. The findings may help managers in evaluating the applicability and tradeoffs, and policymakers in making supportive measures to facilitate sustainability using blockchain.

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Blockchain is an emerging technology with potential to address issues related to sustainability. Literature reviews on blockchain and sustainability exist, but there is a need to consolidate existing results, in particular, in terms of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This extended abstract presents an ongoing tertiary study based on existing literature reviews to investigate the relationship between blockchain and sustainability in terms of SDGs. Results from a pilot analysis of 18 reviews using thematic analysis are presented.

Blockchain as a disruptive technology and a driver for social changes has been applied to a wide range of applications, exhibiting a great potential to promote sustainable practices and help organizations and governments to achieve United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Literature reviews on blockchain and sustainability exist, but there is a need to consolidate existing results in terms of SDGs. This paper presents a tertiary review based on 28 existing literature reviews to investigate the relationship between blockchain and sustainability, focusing on SDGs. The findings include a novel mapping of impact-based interlinkage of blockchain and SDGs and a systematic overview of drivers and barriers to adopting blockchain for sustainability. Research gaps to overcome the barriers and enhance blockchain’s positive impacts on SDGs are identified. We found that blockchain applications are still in their early stages. Future empirical studies are needed regarding their large-scale deployment and long-term impacts on sustainability as well as standard tools and methods for implementing blockchain-based sustainable solutions from the software engineering perspective.

<p> Blockchain as a disruptive technology and a driver for social change has exhibited great potential to promote sustainable practices and help organizations and governments achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Literature reviews on blockchain and sustainability exist, but they often focus only on topics related to one or a few SDGs. There is a need to consolidate existing results in terms of SDGs and provide a comprehensive overview of the impacts that blockchain technology may have on each SDG. This paper intends to bridge this gap, presenting a tertiary review based on 34 existing literature reviews, to investigate the relationship between blockchain and sustainability in light of SDGs. The method used is a consensus-based expert elicitation with thematic analysis. The findings include a novel and comprehensive mapping of impact-based interlinkage of blockchain and SDGs and a systematic overview of drivers and barriers to adopting blockchain for sustainability. The findings reveal that blockchain can have a positive impact on all 17 SDGs through technological innovations though some negative effects can occur and impede the achievement of certain objectives. 73 positive and 10 negative linkages between blockchain adoption and the 17 SDGs as well as 45 factors that drive or hinder blockchain adoption for the achievement of SDGs have been identified. Research gaps to overcome the barriers and enhance blockchain’s positive impacts have also been identified. The findings may help managers in evaluating the applicability and tradeoffs and policymakers in making supportive measures to facilitate sustainability using blockchain. </p>