The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were proposed by the United Nations (UN) and adopted as UN Resolution A/RES/66/288 in 2015 are a set of 17 universal Goals and 169 associated Targets that have implications for everyone in every country and society, at present and in the future. Consequently, countries around the world signed up to the UN Resolution, accepting and agreeing to work towards achieving the Targets of the SDGs by 2030. Numerous reports, research papers, books and web resources have since appeared, discussing the benefits, progress, challenges and needs for co-operation and collaboration for achieving the SDGs that touch upon almost everything in each country, each society and each individual in the world.

This book offers an information science perspective on measuring the performance and assessing progress in achieving the SDGs. The primary focus is on the role and use of data, metadata and information in measuring the achievements and progress in different SDGs, and the standards and tools developed by international and national agencies to support this work. The book introduces the concepts and principles of information science and data management to people without a specialist background in those areas and similarly promises an introduction to the concepts and principles of sustainable development and sustainable information, before moving on to consider the current state of collection, management and use of different kinds of data for the SDGs at global and national levels, followed by chapters dealing with particular issues and specific Goals and Targets.

Overall, the book discusses the role and importance of data, information, people and society in achieving the Targets of the SDGs. It discusses the different types of metadata required for capturing data and information related to the Targets of different SDGs and various associated challenges, such as data availability and completeness, and even challenges associated with metadata and data collection, such as qualitative versus quantitative data for some Targets and Indicators. Appropriate data, charts and tables have been used from different reports and statistics from the various UN agencies, OECD and EU, as well as national agencies such as the ONS (Office for National Statistics) in the UK.

This chapter focuses on a major subgroup of Islendingasögur, the poets’ sagas or skalds’ sagas. While many Íslendingasögur include skaldic verses placed in the mouths of characters, in poets’ sagas the verses are attributed to and spoken by known poets, who were predominantly Icelanders. The role some of these Icelanders played as court poets to rulers of Norway is often depicted in short narratives or þættir, and is here argued to represent the beginnings of the development of poets’ sagas. Four sagas are concerned with the more personal aspects of the poets’ lives back in Iceland, and the narrative follows a distinct and repeated pattern of rivalry with another man, in some cases also a poet, who marries the object of the protagonist’s desire. These sagas, Kormáks saga, Hallfreðar saga, Bjarnar saga Hítdœkappa and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu, are analysed in detail to highlight the centrality and similarity of the love-triangle pattern, with Egils saga displaying a vestigial element of it. Themes of love, grief and insult (nið) are discussed, and the chapter concludes by contrasting the bitterness of the poets’ rivalries with the strength of their devotion to their patrons.

During the nineteenth century, Iberia entered the path towards modern economic growth. Although industrialization occurred later than in other Western European countries, economic progress ultimately led to an unprecedented improvement in the standards of living. This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of such advances and, when possible, compare Iberia with its Western European counterparts. In so doing, it presents several indicators capturing different dimensions of well-being, average income, consumption patterns, height, life expectancy, and a synthetic measure, the Human Development Index (HDI). Income distribution is examined by looking at alternative inequality indicators: Gini coefficient, the extraction ratio and top income shares. Based on this information the long-run evolution of economic inequality is assessed. All in all, the evidence presented shows that economic progress and well-being significantly improved in Iberia since mid-nineteenth century, although this happened at a slower pace than in Western Europe.

The question of legitimation, according to the analysis of the Frankfurt scholars, contains an unanswered aspect pertaining to the entire normative approach. This is about the final arbiter to decide whether a regulatory system can claim legitimacy. It can be logically suggested that such a final arbiter needs to be positioned outside of the normative system in question. Once we can agree that the natality aspect of fundamental rights is lost in the transfer from the non-digital domain, we see that the Frankfurt school’s aspiration towards the general explanatory power is lost as well. The relational chain stops after the creation of the digital narrative; that is, normativity does not follow as a logical result from internal development inside the digital domain. Despite the relational chain being broken, normativity exists in and for the digital domain. If not a result of the development as proposed by the Frankfurt school, there have to be other explanatory venues. The main among these is the concept of self-normativity.

This chapter aims to tie together many of the themes in the preceding chapters with a four-fold strategy. First, it sets out a general overview of the Iberian economy during the medieval period. This includes an analysis of how and why the economic balance of power shifted from the Islamic to the Christian states during the medieval centuries. Then, it provides a broader picture of some major developments in the peri-Iberian European and Islamic-Mediterranean economies in the medieval period, including micro- and macroeconomic developments. Third, this chapter shows how different regions of Iberia connected with elements of the peri-Iberian economies set out in the previous section; specifically how the Islamic states maintained ties with North Africa and points further afield; how the Christian North and West connected with the northern Atlantic economy; how the south-west eventually built ties with the Atlantic islands, West Africa, and more distant markets; and how the Eastern peninsula maintained ties with various Mediterranean markets. Finally, the chapter ends with some general conclusions, including the idea that, as this volume amply shows, it is high time to dispel any lingering sense of an economic “Black Legend” when discussing the economy of medieval Iberia.

The literature on violence risk assessment has primarily focused on prescriptive approaches, whereby methods are designed to assess risk to arrive at accurate conceptualizations and decisions regarding future risk. However, we have often failed to think about the underlying decision-making process clinicians exhibit, and especially the decision-making within the limitations of their clinical contexts. Understanding this underlying decision-making process is imperative to maximize the success or accuracy of our prescriptive approaches. The current chapter seeks to review the history of decision-making across the generations of violence risk assessment and identify our primary approaches to risk assessment decision-making, or our prescriptive approaches. We then turn our attention toward the decision-making process itself and focus on the information we use to arrive at our decisions regarding violence risk and the use of this information in clinical practice. Finally, we identify areas of future exploration.

This chapter focuses on the reception of Old Norse-Icelandic literature. It begins with a discussion of the definition of the term ‘reception’ and moves on to describe the beginnings of medievalism in Europe and its roots in social and political change. The relationship between nationalism and a ‘Nordic’ or ‘Germanic’ racial identity is explored, and the role of Old Norse myth in politics, ideology and propaganda is analysed. Following a survey of early modern and eighteenth-century European responses to Old Norse literature, including the work of Paul-Henri Mallet, and nineteenth-century translations of Old Norse literature and the work of Jacob Grimm, the discussion moves on to German nationalism and Old Norse, culminating in the National Socialist appropriation of Old Norse mythology and motifs. The use of medieval Icelandic literature to reconstruct a supposed pre-Christian Germanic religion is outlined, and the anti-Christian and anti-Jewish attitudes of so-called völkisch thought explained. The subsequent rise of Neopaganism throughout the world is the subject of the rest of the chapter, with special attention to the racist ideology evident in various Neopagan groups.

In this chapter, I demonstrate how the shock of Stalin’s death in 1953 caused a collapse in the cohesion of the Polish communist ruling coalition. This breakdown caused a persistent decline in the regime’s coercive capacity. The transition to a post-Stalinist ruling coalition in Warsaw removed the institutional basis for cooperation among PZPR elites. The highest echelons of the communist regime could no longer agree on an appropriate repressive policy or effectively monitor and control their coercive agents. The reformed and reduced post-Stalinist secret police simply did not employ enough agents and secret informants to effectively monitor and repress opponents. Opposition to the communist government among industrial workers and university students crystallized in the 1960s, persisted for decades, and became organized in durable social movements. By the late 1970s, the Polish regime faced a large, well-organized opposition movement in the trade union, Solidarity. The imposition of martial law and reconstruction of the security apparatus after the militarization of the regime in 1980 were too little, too late for the PZPR regime.

The long evolution that had been transforming the Iberian economy since the fifth century found its excipient in the Islamic invasion at the beginning of the eighth century. A consequence was the division of the peninsula into two parts separated by a territorial strip as a border. In the south side, the Muslim al-Andalus settled new population, generally repeating its tribal and traditional structure; applied changes in the tenure and exploitation of agricultural systems; and consolidated the preeminence of urban centres. On this basis it was established a monetary economy connected to the political and social evolution of Mediterranean Islam, applying economic policies that involved public expenditure, taxation and market regulation. Meanwhile, in the northern side, the Christian kingdoms and counties were strengthened thanks to the increase of agrarian land, including the absorption of the border strip. From the eleventh century onwards, feudal structures favoured the kingdoms and counties expansion over the Muslim south. Urban capitals articulated the new territories, at the same time that the Camino de Santiago attracted European immigration which promoted urban activities. Commercial development linked to centres beyond the Pyrenees and, through the Mediterranean, to urban centres of Provence and Italy.

Introduction

‘There is no truly sustainable development without access to information and no meaningful, inclusive access to information without libraries’, remarked Donna Scheeder, the former President of IFLA (Scheeder, 2019). Libraries, and the information services sector in general, can contribute hugely to achieve the UN SDGs by:

• • Promoting universal literacy, including media and information literacy, and digital literacy skills

• • Closing gaps in access to information and helping government, civil society and business to better understand local information needs

• • Providing a network of delivery sites for government programmes and services

• • Advancing digital inclusion through access to ICT, and dedicated staff to help people develop new digital skills

• • Serving as the heart of the research and academic community

• • Preserving and providing access to the world's culture and heritage. ‘Programmes for children, women, adults and other marginalized populations’ make an important contribution to achieving universal literacy. (https://sdgs.un.org/partnerships/contribution-libraries-sdgs)

‘Literacy is imperative in developing sustainable and inclusive societies’, says Arne Carlsen, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) (Carlsen, 2015). SDG4 intends to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This implies that all people, ‘irrespective of gender, age, race or ethnicity, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, children and youth in vulnerable situations, should have access to learning that helps them acquire the knowledge and skills needed to exploit opportunities and to participate fully in society’ (UNESCO, 2015b). As discussed in Chapter 9, education for sustainable development has been identified by UNESCO as a core requirement for achieving success in the SDGs.

However, education for sustainable development has yet not been fully embedded in information sciences curricula. A few discussions and thoughts have been put forward by some researchers and professional associations, which are discussed in this chapter. Similarly, some research papers have been published in the recent past by researchers and professionals in the information science discipline, and initiatives have been taken by the information services sector in examining the role of information for sustainable development. Some of these research and development activities are discussed in this chapter with a view to showing some key trends, as well as challenges.

The typical arguments concerning privatization are instrumental, relying heavily on comparing the performance of a public functionary with that of its private counterpart. This chapter challenges this approach for leaving unaddressed other important consequences of shifting responsibilities to private entities. Privatization cuts off the link between processes of decision-making and the citizens and, therefore, erodes political engagement and its underlying notion of shared responsibility. Consequently, privatization undermines individuals’ public autonomy.

The effects of privatization are not restricted to the question of whether a public prison is better or worse qua prison than its private counterpart, or whether private forestry is better or worse qua forestry than its public counterpart. Stripping the state of its responsibilities erodes public responsibility, for privatization is not only the transformation of detention centers, trains, tax inquiry offices, forestry operations, and so on, considered one service at a time. It is also the transformation of our political system and public culture from ones characterized by robust shared responsibility and political engagement to ones characterized by fragmentation and sectarianism.

Introduction

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in the United Nations Resolution (A/RES/70/1) in 2015. However, the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ have been in existence for quite some time, and have become key issues of discussions around global development. A report published by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, called Our Common Future, which is also known as the Brundtland Report, provided the ‘classic’ definition of sustainable development as:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA argues that sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic, and ecological requirements of present and future generations (EPA, 2010).

These definitions of sustainability focus primarily on the environmental sustainability. However, there are two more dimensions, economic sustainability and social sustainability; the three together are often called the three pillars of sustainability. They are interrelated and interdependent. To achieve sustainable development in any area, there is a need for an integrated approach to these three dimensions of sustainable development (DEFRA, 2009). Thus, sustainable development calls for a convergence between the three pillars of economic development, social equity, and environmental protection (Drexhage and Murphy, 2010).

Appropriate integration of economic, environmental, and social development activities to achieve the SDGs has remained a mission for the United Nations. A number of topics and issues related to sustainable development have been identified by the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development (UN DSD), some of which are social and economic while others are related to environment or natural resource management. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) organised a conference on Sustainable Development – Rio+20 – that took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 20–22 June 2012 (United Nations, 2013b). The objective of this conference was to take stock of the 20 years of actions at all levels to promote sustainable development, and to discuss the future and the way forward.