Queering the 2030 Agenda: A Critical Evaluation of the SDG5 and Its Implementation in Brazil

This chapter builds on the anti-heteronormative and disruptive content of queer critiques to, in light of the debates on SDG territorialization and the limitations of SDG5, queer the 2030 Agenda. The limits of SDG5’s promotion of gender equality are contextualized considering the specificities of the 2030 Agenda as a state-sponsored political project to promote sustainable development which emerged and was consolidated amidst turbulent international (anti-)gender politics and found in Brazil a hostile political context. The Agenda has, however, been territorialized, that is, queer activists who have been countering structural and historical problems in Brazilian gender and sexual politics for decades have translated the Global Goals to local priorities. SDG5’s targets are dissected to reveal how their promotion of gender equality is limited by cis/heteronormative outlooks. Emphasizing the reprocentric futurity which grounds the notion of sustainable development, we demonstrate how, while promoting gender equality, SDG5 reaffirms hierarchical gendered and sexualized power relations. The goal does not challenge contingent categories such as gender and sexuality, normalizes reproduction as what constitutes a meaningful life, and that way obscures how the modern capitalist state system depends on them. Building on the Brazilian case the chapter demonstrates the ambivalence of the 2030 agenda as a project to promote sustainable—as in livable, not unceasing—life and suggests more inclusive and multiple futurities.