14. The Link Between Nuclear Disarmament and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals

In September 2015, the United Nations adopted a new set of global benchmarks, officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and earmarked with a very ambitious achievement-deadline of 2030. The SDGs aim at achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. With this, the international community has now started to speak in a new language at the centre of which lies a renewed commitment to universal peace and larger freedom. Building on the freshness of the theoretical framework of the SDGs, and its peculiar relevance for a world free from human suffering, this Chapter aims at contributing modestly in narrowing an existing knowledge gap about the link between denuclearisation and the SDGs. It does this by critically analysing aspects of the SDGs that are directly related with the on-going global effort of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. This will involve an examination of the suitability of the analytical vocabulary of the SDGs for nuclear disarmament, including interrogation of the extent to which the conceptual resources of the SDGs can add a momentum to contemporary discourse on denuclearization. It is true that the SDGs do not use language, which speaks directly to the danger of global nuclear holocaust, from which there is zero chance of achieving the SDGs themselves. However, the general understanding and the most important departure point is that the SDGs, regardless of any shortcomings they may have, provide a rich analytical framework that can be appositely utilised in strengthening the global call for the eradication of nuclear weapons.