This online conference covers sustainability in relation to all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the virtue of the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. It aims to investigate the most current trends and implications for the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development in the Global North and Global South.

The ISDRS2021 conference will therefore explore transformative challenges and necessary systemic changes towards sustainable development in the light of the SDGs and COVID-19 including, but not limited to general ideas and specific approaches related to:

environmental, social and economic drivers, state and perspectives and their interrelations with stakeholders, population, products, processes, innovation and technologies;

protection and use of the environment, to social resilience, education and equality, and to economic production and consumption pattern, and

the fitness for purpose of and integration among SDGs, also in the light of a post 2030 agenda and the UN 2050 Vision of “Living in harmony with nature”.

The latest UN SDG Progress Report 2020 from July 2020 indicates that before the COVID-19 pandemic, progress remained uneven and that the world was not on track to meet the Goals by 2030. It further shows that this crisis did not sparse any of the SDGs, but effected particularly social ones by reversing several positive trends and even increasing several inequalities within and between countries. The report’s progress summary for the 21 SDG targets with a 2020 deadline indicates that only three of them are fully achieved or fully on track to being achieved, and emphasis the wide lack of these achievements regarding biodiversity (p. 60f).

To this end, we invite a wide range of contributions from those taking a critical stance of the SDGs,  those identifying positive impacts of the SDGs and those providing additional solutions to incremental or holistic sustainability challenges. Discussions will be organised along the traditional tracks of the conference based on the topic groups of ISDRS and special tracks with local perspectives, all related to the overall conference theme. Additionally, prominent keynote and plenary speakers from all around the world will address challenges in science and practice related the overall theme of the conference.

We are planning for a virtual conference platform and it will be available on the website before the conference starts (for registered delegates only).