The Cambridge Handbook on the Sustainable Development Goals and International Law

Book excerpt: "The Cambridge Handbook on the Sustainable Development Goals and International Law was sparked by our curiosity about how a remarkable set of global policy goals for a wide range of areas - the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015, might relate to and influence international law. We also asked ourselves how could the relevant areas of international law promote or hamper the achievement of the SDGs and the overarching aim of attaining sustainable development? To explore this further, we engaged colleagues who were willing to join us on this exciting journey, and we thank them for their most insightful contributions to this volume. The chapters in this Handbook highlight the multifaceted relationship between the SDGs and international law as well as how international law might need to change in order to support the achievement of the SDGs and the realization of sustainable development. Our journey towards this result turned out to be bumpier than expected, given the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of us needed to turn to online teaching, some faced other setbacks, and the three-day workshop, originally planned for June 2020 in Stockholm, was cancelled. What had been planned as an author's retreat to exchange ideas and further develop first drafts of the chapters - at Stockholm University and at the Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Vitterhetsakademien) - had to be turned into an online workshop. While regretting that we could not meet in person, the two-day online workshop was a vibrant occasion for exchanging ideas and active collaboration. All the authors engaged enthusiastically and with creativity and humour. Taking into account the almost twenty hours of time difference between participants as well as the drawbacks of an online environment, the workshop was remarkably fun and fruitful and achieved more than we could have wished for. We have now completed this exciting journey, including a couple of "intellectual roller coaster" moments, and we are delighted with the result"--