Wicked Solutions: SDGs, Research Design and the 'Unfinishedness' of Sustainability

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mark the first time a global body has attempted to manage the planet’s future in its entirety, linking together urgent, over- lapping and contradictory existential threats. If we treat the world as an interlinked system, it becomes clear that all answers to how we live are provisional and evolving. We need more than new knowledge or policies; we need to consider how our different efforts combine, take on life of their own, and nurture new configurations in a dynamic system. This reframing of Development discourse invites a rethink using design theory and approaches to complexity. This essay seeks to contribute by proposing tools to manage the new uncertainties this introduces into the design of experts’ research work. Using ideas of “unfinishedness”, we focus on the incommensurability and contingency to be found in knowledge-making and problem-solving for the evolving goal of socio-environmental renewal.