Before the UN Sustainable Development Goals enables professionals, scholars, and students engaged with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to develop a richer understanding of the legacies and historical complexities of the policy fields behind each goal. Each of the seventeen chapters tells the decades- or centuries-old backstory of one SDG and reveals the global human connections, governance tools and frameworks, and the actors involved in past efforts to address sustainable development challenges. Collectively, the seventeen chapters build a historical latticework that reveals the multiple and often interwoven sources that have shaped the challenges later encompassed in the SDGs. Engaging and insightfully written, the book's chapters are authored by international experts from multiple disciplines. The book is an indispensable resource and a vital foundation for understanding the past's indelible footprint on our contemporary sustainable development challenges.

Martin Gutmann's profile page

Daniel Gorman's profile page

Martin Gutmann is a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. He was previously a senior lecturer and Managing Director of the ETH Zurich Swiss School of Public Governance, where he designed an executive education programme for international policy makers on leadership and the SDGs.

Daniel Gorman is Professor of History at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA). He is the former Director of the PhD program in Global Governance at the BSIA.