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Environmental sustainability as a topic in international studies is most often considered in the context of sustainable development, a goal-oriented, normative concept that suggests the need to reconcile the often conflicting goals of economic development, environmental protection, and social progress. The concept of sustainable development begs the question of how to promote human welfare and prosperity (development) without undermining the ecological life-support systems on which all prosperity ultimately must depend (sustainability). More colloquially: How can we live well while living lightly on the Earth? Unfortunately, economic and social “development” to date has too often meant a steady increase of activities that have led to air and water pollution, cleared forests, drained wetlands, obstructed rivers, and other ecosystem disruptions. These material transformations alter the structure and function of ecosystems, often destroying the services that ecosystems provide and routinely renew: clean fresh water, healthy air, fertile soils, and the other basics of habitability. When pollution crosses borders, when natural resource depletion and environmental degradation cause people to migrate for survival, when global climate and the world’s oceans are threatened, then sustainability becomes an international concern and necessarily a focus of international studies. Ultimately, the challenge for international studies scholars studying sustainability is to understand how to create an international system imbued with consideration of ecological interdependence and coevolution, a sense of responsibility to future generations, and a capacity to make informed decisions based on ecological rationality. In order to find our way out of the sustainability conundrum, policies must be designed to improve welfare without increasing energy and material throughput. This means investing human resources into alternatives to consumption, such as innovations in simple living, collective action, nonmaterial personal satisfaction, and needs prevention.

Child health has been placed at the forefront of international initiatives for development. The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals has propelled worldwide actions to improve maternal and child health. In the course of the year 2000, the Latin American (LA) countries made marked progress in implementing effective newborn and infant life-saving interventions. Under-five mortality in LA fell by a third between 1990 and 2015, with a sharp decline in diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections. Due to the successful immunization programs in the region, some vaccine-preventable diseases have been eliminated. Many of the LA countries have reached nearly universal coverage of childbirths attended by skilled personnel and >80% coverage for antenatal care. In 2015, 18 countries in the region reported the elimination of mother-to-child transmission for both HIV and syphilis. Although the advances in the public agenda aimed at promoting child health and development in Latin American countries are undeniable, unresolved issues remain. While many stillbirths and neonatal deaths could be averted by improving access to antenatal, intra-partum, and postnatal interventions, Latin America has the highest cesarean rate among all regions of the world with an excessive number of such operations without medical indications. The simultaneous lack and excess of cesarean deliveries in LA countries reflects a model of care that excludes a considerable portion of the population and reveals the persistent gaps and inequalities in the region. One of the main challenges to be faced is the lack of sustainable financing mechanisms to provide integrated and high-quality health care to all children, equal education opportunities, and social services to support disadvantaged families. When planning interventions, equity should be restored as the guiding principle of actions to ensure inclusion and social justice. Children represent the future of society in Latin America and elsewhere. For this reason, social commitment to provide universal child health is the genesis of sustainable development and must be an absolute priority.

Women have a lengthy history of fighting their oppression as women and the inequalities associated with this to claim their place on the world stage, in their countries, and within their families. This article focuses on women’s struggles to be recognized as having legitimate concerns about development initiatives at all levels of society and valuable contributions to make to social development. Crucial to their endeavors were: (1) upholding gender equality and insisting that women be included in all deliberations about sustainable development and (2) seeing that their daily life needs, including their human rights, be treated with respect and dignity and their right to and need for education, health, housing, and all other public goods are realized. The role of the United Nations in these endeavors is also considered. Its policies on gender and development, on poverty alleviation strategies—including the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals—are discussed and critiqued. Women’s rights are human rights, but their realization remains a challenge for policymakers and practitioners everywhere. Social workers have a vital role to play in advocating for gender equality and mobilizing women to take action in support of their right to social justice. Our struggle for equality has a long and courageous history.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), endorsed by 189 governments at the Millennium Summit, propose a concerted global effort to reduce the incidence of severe poverty and many of its most serious manifestations over a twenty-five-year period. The MDGs offer crucial insights into the politics of poverty and poverty reduction in international affairs. Their political dimensions can be analyzed in terms of agency, the nature and limits of accountability, the use and manipulation of quantitative goals for political ends, the dangerous illusion that MDG objectives can be accomplished in large part by mobilizing more development assistance, and the MDGs’ distinctly apolitical approach to the structural causes of poverty. The MDG initiative should be situated in three ongoing streams of debate and discussion: the debate over the relative priority of growth and of human development for poverty reduction; the tension between the assertion of rights and the enunciation of donor-driven goals as the political engine of poverty reduction; and the debate over the roles of markets and of state direction and regulation. While the MDGs concentrate on increasing aid flows to reduce the incidence of poverty and its manifestations, international trade and finance arrangements too often impede rapid progress. This is evident in water privatization, trade rules, and anti-retroviral medicines for HIV/AIDS patients. A way forward is to integrate the MDGs more deeply with human rights guarantees. Donors, for example, must take seriously the 2002 Draft Guidelines for the application of human rights to poverty reduction strategies.

Since independence, African states have been striving for economic development, but relatively few countries have achieved their goal. Between 1970 and 2016, real GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa grew by an annual average of just 0.48%. However, there was a wide range of economic performance across different countries, as well as clear variation in growth rates over time. Countries such as the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Madagascar had, on average, a negative growth rate in terms of real GDP per capita. Meanwhile, countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Swaziland had positive average annual growth rates of at least 3%. The differences in economic growth rates reflect the diversity of economic structures, governance, and political stability across African states. Although deeper economic integration among African countries may work to reduce the large disparities in economic development, any projections must nonetheless recognize that countries will differ in their economic trajectories. Variation over time is also important. The dominant patterns of economic development in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s on the one hand, and the 1970s and past the 1990s on the other, were quite different, reflecting a long business cycle. If we look solely at economic growth statistics, the 1980s and 1990s can be described as lost decades. On average, real GDP per capita on the continent declined annually by 1.54% and 0.62% in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. By contrast, between 2000 and 2016, real GDP per capita increased by an annual average of 2.13%. One important debate has focused on whether these shifts are primarily the result of domestic or international factors. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have been blamed for the decline in the economic fortunes of African countries in the 1980s. At the same time, they are praised for pulling many countries out of unsustainable macroeconomic policies. Moreover, a balanced overview of Africa’s development trajectory must conclude that even without major policy shifts such as those brought forth by the SAPs, many countries would still have remained highly dependent on one or just a few commodities, and would therefore have continued to experience wild swings in their business cycles in the absence of international intervention. The lack of economic diversification of many economies on the continent means that the future is hard to predict. However, the prerequisites for a prosperous Africa are not a mystery—they include good governance, economic diversity, and genuine economic integration.

The international financial institutions (IFIs) have adapted and changed their policies over time to focus on global justice and poverty alleviation. This evolution is explored, with close attention to the role of political economy scholars and international events that increased the pressure on the IFIs to change their policies. Events such as the failure of structural adjustment policies, and the increasing role of nongovernmental organizations after the end of the Cold War were strong forces advocating for both debt relief policies and efforts designed to alleviate poverty. Problems surrounding the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and the increased role of the IFIs during the 2008 global financial crisis are also discussed.