Who Should Bear the Burden? The EU’s Approach to Responsibility for the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

This thesis analyses the EU’s approach to responsibility for the Sustainable Development Goals. The transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 highlighted a normative contestation between UN Member States over responsibility for sustainable development. Since there historically have been no consensus at the UN on the allocation of burdens, I argue that it is important to analyse how different foreign policy actors perceive their role and responsibilities for a global sustainable development agenda. An analytical focus on norms has been important to nuance the EU’s approach to the burden-sharing debate. By doing so, this thesis contributes to the political sociology of the EU. In contemporary studies of the EU the interest for norm-oriented action has been limited, although norms play a central role in accounting for action in classic sociological theories. My theoretical framework also utilises theories of global political justice, useful to analyse different claims about what the guiding principles of a global sustainable development agenda should be. I formulate three theoretically grounded expectations prior to conducting the empirical research, informed by the works of Pettit, Butt and I. M. Young. The first expectation corresponds with a ‘non-domination’ perspective on global political justice, in stressing that commitments at the international level are voluntary, while emphasising the moral obligation to prevent inequality. The second and third expectations both relate to the ‘mutual recognition’ perspective on global political justice. However, they propose rival expectations about historical responsibility. Through a single-case study of the EU at the negotiations for the Sustainable Development Goals, I highlight which structures of responsibility at the international level the EU perceives to be just. I do so by analysing the EU’s justifications, in official documents and interviews with EU policy officers. This thesis finds that the EU, by explicitly arguing for the moral obligation of emerging economies to increase their international commitments, implicitly argue that historical responsibility should be of less significance in allocating responsibilities for sustainable development.