Prescriptive Positivism: Discourse on Sustainable Development Goal Interactions and Perspectives for a Post‐2030 World

Key findings from this study

• The study found that prescriptive positivist discourse dominates academic literature on SDG interactions, emphasizing management, research, and technical solutions to achieve development objectives.
• The authors report that equity is systematized as instrumental rather than as an intrinsic value, with integration efforts remaining constrained to coordination mechanisms.
• The researchers demonstrate that stewardship perspectives incorporating pluralism and treating justice and nature as foundational values represent an underexamined alternative for conceptualizing post-2030 sustainability frameworks.

Overview

The Sustainable Development Goals remain unlikely to achieve their 2030 targets, necessitating examination of underlying conceptual frameworks and operational assumptions. This analysis identifies a dominant prescriptive positivist discourse in academic literature on SDG interactions that emphasizes managerial solutions and technical expertise while treating equity instrumentally and limiting integration beyond coordination mechanisms.

Methods and approach

The authors conducted an inductive latent thematic analysis of 35 academic papers examining SDG interactions. This approach extracted emergent themes from the discourse without imposing predetermined categorical frameworks, enabling identification of implicit values and epistemological assumptions embedded in the literature.

Results

The analysis reveals that academic discourse on SDG interactions centers on a prescriptive positivist orientation. Authors predominantly adopt directive language and advocate technical or managerial fixes to address trade-offs, typically proposing adequate financial resources, proper governance structures, and enhanced scientific evidence as solutions. Equity is treated as instrumental rather than intrinsic, with acknowledgment restricted to measurable dimensions. Calls for integration rarely transcend coordination arrangements, reflecting internalized fragmentation in how complex systems interactions are conceived and operationalized. The discourse demonstrates transactionality—approaching SDG challenges through discrete, separable interventions rather than systemic transformation.

Implications

The identification of prescriptive positivist framing suggests that current academic approaches may inadvertently reinforce fragmented policy responses and undervalue plural perspectives on sustainability. Overlooked stewardship perspectives that prioritize pluralism and treat equity, justice, and nature as intrinsic values offer alternative conceptual foundations for post-2030 frameworks. Reconceptualizing SDG discourse beyond managerial and technical paradigms may enable more substantive integration and alignment with diverse knowledge systems and value frameworks essential for transformative sustainability outcomes.

Scope and limitations

This summary is based on the study abstract and available metadata. It does not include a full analysis of the complete paper, supplementary materials, or underlying datasets unless explicitly stated. Findings should be interpreted in the context of the original publication.