To achieve sustainability, the world needs stability. Yet two-thirds of countries are facing major economic, political, and social problems. Most of them are also experiencing ethnic or civil conflicts, mass migration and poverty crises. The question is whether the UN’s sustainability agenda can succeed in the context of ongoing or simmering conflicts.
Paradoxically, preventing wars and conflicts isn’t one of the UN’s seventeen sustainable development goals. Perhaps there is a reason for this omission. Conflicts and wars are not a set of conditions that can be easily isolated. They are often a combination of failures in a dozen related areas that the United Nations promises to miraculously synchronize by 2030 in its quest for sustainability. 
As an anthropologist interested in rural areas

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