In 2015, the United Nations established seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that aimed 'to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all' by 2030. The chapters within this collection address each of these SDGs, considering how they relate to one another and international law, and what institutions could aid their implementation. Development has been a contentious topic since the decolonization period after World War II, and issues surrounding sustainable development are necessarily impacted by the multifaceted relationship between the Global South and Global North. Confronting the context and challenge of sustainable development, this collection outlines how the international economic system problematizes the attainment of the SDGs. Introducing a novel, cosmopolitan approach, this book offers new ways of understanding sustainable development and suggests potential solutions so that we might finally achieve it.

In this booklet, the text of which formed the basis for a lecture held upon the acceptance of the Chair of Public International Law at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the author explores the role of state-consent in normative development at the international level during times of globalization. She makes the point that increasingly state-consent is understood as consent to a process of normative development, the outcome of which is unknown at the time when consent is given. Understanding state-consent in this manner, however, results in questions arising with respect to the legitimacy of international decision-making processes. These questions address transparency and accountability in international decision-making and are related to the changing character of the international legal system, which increasingly besides regulating the interests that states share also seeks to regulate the common-interest of the international community.