[Commlist] Sustainability in Action Call for Papers

Sustainability in Action Call for Papers

On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development came into force. The UN 
describes its Sustainable Development Goals as ‘a shared blueprint for 
peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the 
future’. Consisting of 17 inter-connected fields of activity, the UNSDGs 
are framed as a moral intervention, and couched in the language of 
development. The ambition to end poverty and hunger, promote education 
and provide ubiquitous healthcare, to attain parity between genders, 
protect the environment, and establish responsible patterns of 
production and consumption, represent some of the most important 
initiatives of our time.

On several fronts, achievements toward these goals should be applauded 
and disseminated widely as good practice. Incentives provided for 
developing SDG initiatives such as environmental protections orders, 
rewilding programmes, investment in education to remote areas and 
communities, and a concerted effort by leading global industries to 
reduce carbon emissions, minimize waste, and pollution - require 
investment, legislation, and oversight to ensure they happen.
Critics of the scheme, however, have voiced serious concern at the 
appropriation of SDG narratives that are used to conceal illicit 
corporate and commercial practice. There are widespread fears that the 
term sustainability itself is fast becoming a metaphor for cutbacks and 
austerity measures throughout a range of different public and private 
sectors (including public healthcare and education).

This dichotomy is best represented by multinational concerns who 
endeavor to promote more environmentally friendly energy solutions that 
require vast amounts of deforestation to provide the real estate 
necessary for plantations. Throughout Southeast Asia, the loss of 
natural habitats to the ‘wonder’ fuel of Palm Oil, typifies these 
concerns. Similarly, the global trade in recyclable waste (largely from 
the global north to ODA territories), represents another failure in the 
implementation of UN SDGs.

This call for papers, represents both sides of an important debate, and 
welcomes discussion for a wide range of sectors to both celebrate and 
interrogate critical SDG interventions.

The intention of this conference is to examine the progress made in the 
fight to end poverty, to promote health, develop sustainable smart 
cities, to prevent further climate change, to facilitate economic 
growth, to protect the oceans, and to end world hunger.
We are interested in hearing how the SDG’s are being implemented, how 
they are documented or recorded, are being enforced, or comparatively, 
instances where essential work has been found requiring action.
We are especially interested in hearing from delegates in sectors 
representing the mass media, film, cultural industries, healthcare, 
politics and education.

Conference themes include:

•	how the objectives above are communicated or promoted within 
‘developed’ and especially ‘developing’ nations and the global north
•	the extent to which these goals are being encouraged, measured, 
enacted or resisted
•	the local, autonomous, grassroots initiatives that may embrace or go 
beyond the framework set by the UN
•	the social, political, cultural and economic barriers to the 
successful attainment of the UNSDGs
•	the application of discourse/multi-modal approaches to the textual 
material produced within a material/symbolic environment
•	the representation of those groups identified as vulnerable and in 
need of support
•	the ways in which the rights of women, notions of gendered identity, 
descriptions of class location, and ideas about race/ethnicity are 
articulated (or not) within the UNSDGs
•	the use by state and corporate authority of discourses that attempt to 
reproduce the symbolic references employed by the UN
•	who, within the various DAC territories and within ‘developed’ 
nations, are presented as the main proponents, actors, or opponents of 
the UNSDGs
•	the relationship between the UNSDGs and the concept and practice of 
globalisation
•	the role of policing, surveillance, regimes of border-control, and 
other barriers and impediments to collective social action
•	the relationship between the Goals and the activity of social movements
•	how ‘existential’ and other threats are constituted through the 
language and images used in the SDGs
•	the media ecology/context of the call and the responses it creates
•	case studies covering the successes or failures of the initiatives

For those submitting papers please note …

250 Word Abstract and Bio are required by Friday 25th April 2025 – send 
to (b.harbisher /at/ derby.ac.uk)

Feedback and acceptance will be offered by the following Monday, 1st May 
2025.

Original research generated from this phase of the conference series 
will be considered for publication in the next volume of The Mediation 
of Sustainability.

Venue and General information

The conference will take place online on Tues 24th June 2025, 
facilitated by #SDGFilmfest and the LSPR Business and Communications 
Institute, Bekasi, Jakarta. The event organizers will host the 
conference as a hybrid event for delegates wishing to present their work 
online or attend remotely. In person attendance is yet to be confirmed.

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