In 2015, the United Nations member states agreed upon a universal agenda for sustainable development with seventeen belonging goals that are to be achieved by 2030. This agenda, which is generally known as Agenda 2030, is said to provide a shared blueprint for prosperity and peace for all human beings and the planet. It stresses that humans should get the opportunity to enjoy economic, social, and technological progress that occurs in harmony with nature (Desa, U.N, 2015). In other words, the human and the non-human world are enclosed in the agenda, but until now, no studies have focused on how they and the relationship between them are represented within Agenda 2030. This needs to be broadened since such a focus would make it possible to provide insightful reflections on the ontological and epistemological standpoints upon which human understandings of the human, the non-human, and their relationship are grounded (see Maraud & Guyot, 2016; Fletcher, 2016; Fälton, 2021). This study contributes to such broadening by focusing on narratives of the non-human world and its relationship to the human world enabled in Agenda 2030. Through a narrative analysis (e.g., Bruner, 2003; Haraway, 2016) of the text in the agenda, we unravel, make visible, and problematize what stories that occur and how those are told. As part of that analysis, we also discuss the possibilities and limitations of using the concepts of "nature", "the other than human world", "the non-human world", and "the more-than-human world" (see Escobar, 1996; Demeritt, 2002; Soper, 2012) when problematizing global sustainability transformations agreements. Our initial analysis shows that Agenda 2030 is permeated by anthropocentric values (see Lövbrand et al., 2015). This become visible in examples such as portrayals of the non-human world as a product that should be consumed by humans, and representations of the planet as a place that needs to be preserved for the need of present as well as future human generations rather than for its own sake. Another example is the agenda stating that all human beings of the world should be included in and supported by its actions, while only the most endangered species are integrated. Consequently, the separation between the human and the non-human world, creates hierarchies, where some species are presented as more valuable than others, who are being made invisible.
2022.
Other than Human World: Emerging Vegetal Communication in the Public Space, May 25, 2022