Johnson M.M.
Abstract
Sustainable development has emerged as a dominant paradigm in global governance, promising to reconcile economic growth, social welfare and environmental protection. However, sustainable development remains a fundamentally contested terrain shaped by unequal power relations, structural conflicts and competing political interests. The paper is an attempt to examine how processes of sustainable development are constituted through deliberate political settlements, the marginalization of alternative development models and the resilience of grassroots environmental justice movements through a political sociology lens. It should be noted that achieving genuine sustainability requires confronting the deeply political nature of environmental governance, moving beyond technocratic approaches and fostering democratization of sustainability transformation. Thus, the project of sustainable development, as articulated in global forums, is not a neutral technical fix but a deeply political arena where competing ideologies, economic interests and social values clash. In short, despite decades of international negotiations and scientific consensus, the global community remains on a collision course with ecological limits and what political struggles might yet alter that trajectory.