Beyond the pledges: reflections on sustainability transitions in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region

On 1 January 2016, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) paving the way towards the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development became effective, after being adopted by world leaders at a UN General Assembly held in September 2015. States gave themselves the next 15 years to take concrete action towards achieving these new universally applicable goals. Yet to date, it is evident that there remains a discrepancy between the rate of global progress and the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda (UN Citation2018). We need to move beyond the initial euphoria of endorsement that occurred in September 2015 and focus on what needs to be done to realise the sustainability agenda in the most effective context-relevant ways, given the various different regions. This places a critical responsibility on researchers, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide to take stock of where things stand and the road ahead.
This special issue of Development in Practice focuses on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in the Arab region to examine the frameworks, efforts, and transitions that have been instated since their pledges to the sustainability agenda. In recent decades GCC states’ national strategies have advanced from a focus merely on infrastructure and state-building projects to more incorporation of issues such as the effective utilisation of natural resources to achieve sustainable development, or the promotion of environmentally friendly technologies and practices (Bryde, Mouzughi, and Al Rasheed Citation2015; Al-Saidi and Elagib Citation2018). This has been reflected in the economic, environmental, and social aspects of policymaking in the region, which have continued to evolve since the endorsement of the SDGs. The SDGs provided these states with a guiding framework and accountability structure, in contrast to previous strategies that had lacked the holistic and inclusive approach to sustainable economic, social, and environmental development encapsulated within the 2030 Agenda (Saab and Sadik Citation2016).

The papers in this special issue reflect the guest editors’ commitment to bring to the fore scholarship about the sustainability transition in the GCC states, a region that has been relatively less debated and published on. The issue provides a platform for sharing insights emerging from research and practice in and about the region in relation to sustainable development, and seeks to bridge the work of academics, policymakers and practitioners – all of whom are essential actors to any real transition towards sustainable development. To that end, we asked contributors to reflect upon a range of questions, including the role of national visions in driving the sustainable development agenda and the extent to which they reflect local, regional and global sustainability pressures and debates; the impacts of sustainability policies and participation arrangements in driving this change; and how these initiatives were being translated in the Gulf context of aridity, energy-abundance and water scarcity. We also encouraged perspectives on practical approaches in terms of innovations, projects and programmes that exemplify the transition to sustainable development or raise issues that could contribute to future, more effective interventions. The contributions collectively are ultimately concerned with identifying cross-cutting challenges which face the GCC region in the adoption of sustainable development practices, with a view to extracting practical lessons on sustainability as well as social and economic transition that can be shared with the wider Arab region or similar contexts. While the GCC has context specificities that must be taken into account, we anticipate that the insights from this region will nevertheless contribute to current debates and efforts in the drive towards the global sustainability agenda.