# A Novel ICT Framework for Sustainable Development Goals
## 2 Background of the Problem and Our Contribution
### A Changing-Discourse Perspective on Sustainability
Subsequently, the negotiations at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) \"demonstrated a major shift in the perception of sustainable development--away from environmental issues toward social and economic development\" [33]. This shift, which was strongly influenced by the MDGs and driven by the requirements of developing countries, represents an illustration of how sustainable development has been dragged in multiple directions over its (more than two decades) long history. By integrating the MDGs with additional socio-economic aspects, the WSSD \"did make a constructive change by focusing considerably more attention on development issues\" [33]. In 2012, a 20-year follow-up to the 1992 Earth Summit was held in the form of another UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Conference, also known as Rio+20, was intended to address novel and emergent challenges, safeguard a renewed political commitment for sustainable development, and evaluate the development and implementation problems in meeting the prior commitments. In Rio, member states decided, among others, to start a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will build upon the MDGs and converge with the post 2015 development agenda. In January 2015, the negotiation process on the post-2015 development agenda began, which has ended up in the subsequent adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (with 17 SDGs at its core) in September 2015. In essence, the main reasons for poverty and universal demand for development that works for all. Along with the persistent development needs, such as poverty eradication, education, health, food security and nutrition, they set forth a variety of interrelated economic, social, and environmental aims including more peaceful and inclusive societies. In point of fact, the Rio+20 repeated once again the many different features of sustainability. The Conference resulted in a focused political outcome document--\"The Future We Want\"--which makes a reference to the three aspects of sustainable development (economic, social, and environmental), but also to good governance as a key element for sustainable development. This idea is also held by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which considers good governance (including peace and security) to be critical for sustainability. Nevertheless, global governance is still confronting (facing) two major obstacles. First, the global governance arena is embedded in economic structures and regimes, in which market power has been translated into political power. Even Global Redesign Initiative, as an attempt by the World Economic Forum to reshape the agenda and formulate a new system of global governance, is highly influenced by the most important and powerful businesses. Second, global governance institutions, created in the last century, have not been adapted to the digital and networked world. Although global governance institutions are created to steer social processes at the international level through international laws and norms, so far they have not properly addressed sustainable development. Nevertheless, there are few studies across a range of academic disciplines which have addressed the global environmental challenges, such as global environmental governance [37; 38; 39] and international environmental law [40; 41; 42]. Several reforms of the global governance institutions have also been proposed [43], including those grounded on the concepts of global systems science [43] and complex adaptive systems [44]. In essence, the 2030 Agenda addresses holistically environmental, social, and economic concerns, aiming to transform the purely economic model of prosperity of our society to an integrated and sustainable model of prosperity. The success of the 2030 Agenda, however, depends on its implementation.