Global Social and Environmental Justice and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Toward an Intersectional, Dialogical, and Reflexive Approach

When this Special Issue was planned, it was initially intended to solicit contributions from a diverse group of international scholars on various innovative, theoretical, empirical, and policy-focused studies related to inequity and social and environmental justice issues relevant to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On both empirical and practical levels, this issue was motivated by the reversal of years of progress as we approached the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. There were 17 SDGs laid out in this agenda by all UN member states in 2015 as an “urgent call for action by all countries–developed and developing–in a global partnership” [1]. These goals recognize the importance of linking objectives and actions across social, economic, environmental, and climate-related fields by emphasizing that “ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth—all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests” [1]. Based on The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022, the UN states that “cascading and interlinked crises are putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival” [2] and “The confluence of crises, dominated by COVID-19, climate change, and conflicts, are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, and affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” [2]. In 2025, progress reports have stated that the uneven progress of continents such as Africa “is insufficient to achieve the SDGs by 2030” [3], with Asia Pacific “falling behind on sustainable development and climate targets” or indeed “significantly off track in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with most targets either stalled or off pace” [4]. In Latin America and the Caribbean, “23% of the SDG targets will be achieved by 2030, with 41% advancing at an insufficient pace and 36% having stalled or regressed compared to 2015 levels” [5]. Additionally, efforts in Europe, North America, and Central Asia face “strong headwinds from the continuing conflicts, climate change, and economic uncertainties” with persistent challenges [6].

In fact, according to a recent SDG report published in July 2025, the UN states that progress since 2015 has been “fragile and unequal” and insufficient to meet goals by 2030. Notably, there are significant gaps in progress across the goals, with Goals 5 (Gender Equality), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 13 (Climate Action), and 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) lagging significantly [7].

At this juncture, studies have highlighted critical gaps and turning points. The establishment of this Special Issue aimed to contribute to an intersectional, dialogical, and reflexive approach to addressing several existing gaps noted in recent scholarship. First, the social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice is still largely neglected [8]. The critical intersection of social and environmental equity has been clearly shown in recent major ecological and social injustice crises (acutely reflected in the collective experience of COVID-19 and conversations about social/racial inequity) (see [9], for example). It is imperative that social and environmental issues are addressed together, but we still significantly lack the empirical data and analytical tools to “fully understand the interactions between” various injustices and inequalities [10]. Second, the rise of an intersectional framework for understanding how multiple sources of oppression work socially and environmentally has provided a “pivot” for understanding the underlying drivers of identity-based inequalities and differential vulnerabilities [11]. This approach is accompanied by attention to spatial intersectionality and other concepts and methods to incorporate diverse geographical scales and contexts in relation to intersectionality. However, in a global setting, studies can still be handicapped without attention to various agents, dynamics, and their interactions in various local, national, regional, and transnational contexts, particularly in the Global South. Third, despite calls for acknowledging “different forms of knowing” from the Global South and North and an understanding of non-Western struggles and practices based on “non-Western conceptions of justice, nature, difference, culture and identity” [12], the SDGs are still criticized for reflecting the dominance of interests from the Global North, demanding continual conversation where local interests meet, collective imaginaries form, and indicators serve as tools or “sites for a needed debate” [13]. A dialogical approach begins with the idea that “meaningful change arises from genuine conversations and mutual understanding,” which necessarily entails learning local needs and knowledge to find solutions in a collaborative manner [14]. Fourth, a dialogical approach must be reflexive, examining past experiences, both successes and failures, to inform future decisions. Many have called for more studies on the underlying structural problems that cause the failure to meet the SDGs, advocating for a more critical and reflexive approach “from the bottom up” to better understand what is needed by the most vulnerable groups [15]. Some argue that a reflexive approach including questioning existing assumptions, goals, and tools from diverse perspectives “should be a major priority for the [SDGs] going forward” [16].

It was in this context that this Special Issue made a call for contributions in 2022/23 from a wide array of scholars that addressed ongoing challenges related to the SDGs and the most recent critical intersectional issues. It was made clear that this collection was open to research articles creatively contributing to theories, methodologies, empirical cases, or policies relevant to issues including but not limited to the following: linking social justice, inequity, and/or poverty with environmental, health, and climate justice; disadvantaged, marginalized, or underprivileged groups and environmental justice; women’s, migrants’, and ethnic or racial minorities’ experiences; indigenous knowledge; social, racial, and gender inequity and their intersections with community and social-ecological resilience; and/or sustainable development in various urban and rural settings and from local to regional scales. Our call for research particularly encouraged submissions from underrepresented scholars or regions.

In this Special Issue, published in 2025, our contributors focus on issues from labor and socioeconomic inequality in Central and Eastern Europe to social empowerment and poverty alleviation among women in Nigeria, refugee and migrant integration in South Korea, post-disaster housing in the United States, and COVID-19 and urban resilience in Hainan Island, China. Covering four different continents, this Special Issue’s research collectively contributes to advancing understanding about inequality, social and environmental justice, and the SDGs in various geographic contexts. All presented articles provide evidence-based insights into paths forward, along with creative solutions; however, the focus is more on inequality and social justice than on environmental equity. We expect these themes to be continued to be elaborated on, allowing for the publication of more research on the interactions among all three areas.

First, all contributing articles discuss the relevance of the SDGs across various continents, regions, and countries, from the Global South and East to the Global North. Both the prioritization of the SDGs and the obstacles to achieving them are highly geographically diverse, demanding the study of the complex, interconnected, and deeper structural issues in place. For example, in Nae et al.’s article (Contribution 2), income inequality in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries is associated with labor market institutions, globalization, economic development, and effective governance, which reveals related structural issues, such as those in education and technological advancement. These issues are historically shaped and contingent upon agents at multiple scales, such as local and national governments, as seen in Konduri and Lee’s article on refugees and migrants in Busan, South Korea (Contribution 4). The paper by Chen and Chen (Contribution 1) also exhibits “the complexities involving agents and dynamics of resilience building, including the role of the state on multiple scales”. Similarly, Landaeta and Richman’s article (Contribution 5) also highlights place-based understanding and hearing from “a diverse array of stakeholders” to recognize the barriers of sustainable and resilient post-disaster housing recovery in the U.S.

Second, this Special Issue highlights the relevance of an intersectional approach, which has the capacity to advance scholarly and policy-related endeavors more effectively and swiftly toward achieving the SDGs. Following earlier publications and calls from the field of intersectional environmentalism [17], this approach has emerged as a key focus in UN discussions and recent studies (see, for example, UN-DESA) to identify multidimensional inequalities and promote solutions that extend beyond the sphere of purely economic development. For example, highlighting a racial and ethnic lens would support a better understanding of the root causes of inequalities in countries in the Global South with diverse populations and truly incorporate indigenous and local understandings of sustainability in policy priorities [18]. Our Special Issue scratches the surface of this subject, with all articles pointing out future directions of research based on robust data and policy analyses that include perspectives and knowledge from marginalized and vulnerable groups, such as women, migrants, refugees, ethnical and racial minorities, informal workers, and those currently affected by climate change. Ultimately, studies need to examine the intersection between physical, socioeconomic, cultural, political, and environmental factors, as the authors included in this collection suggest (Contribution 4).

Third, although it may be questioned whether such dialog is relevant or indeed possible, this dialogical approach is essential to sharing voices and experiences, which are critical to building a shared understanding of the challenges in transforming toward a just and sustainable future. This understanding, in turn, helps enhance social cohesion, which is critical to collectively “boosting social protections and eradicating inequalities” [19] and fosters learning and creative solutions to problems across regions and countries. Some of these solutions may lie outside the formal sector and even the economic realm. For example, as demonstrated by our Special Issue, in CEE countries, informal jobs help reduce income inequality (Contribution 2). Additionally, in Nigeria, social empowerment significantly correlates with reduction in poverty among women (Contribution 3), and in China, social resilience requires more attention, as rural–urban and regional disparities persist despite the country’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The case of Hainan Island underscores the importance of examining informal networks, which may be particularly crucial for islands due to their unique geographical locations (Contribution 1).

Overall, this Special Issue offers an innovative sample of the most recent work relevant to the SDGs at a critical point in time. We hope the presented findings provide insights for scholars and policymakers as they chart a path, even beyond 2030, toward a just and sustainable future for all. Our collection of research highlights the importance of continuing dialog among regions, reflexivity, and an intersectional approach.