When Sustainable Development Embraces Blockchain: A Systematic Literature Review

The non-renewable resources are limited on this earth and will get exhausted if not utilized carefully. Ensuring the availability of these resources for future generations is the key philosophy of sustainable development (SD). To protect and preserve the environment, United Nations has proposed 17 sustainability development goals, which can be attained by coupling nature, human and technology. Among several technological disruptions, blockchain technology (BCT) has the huge potential to verify SD. The current study aims at analysis and synthesis of available studies on implication of BCT for SD, using systematic literature review methodology. Out of 17 SDGs only two goals, zero hunger (goal no. 2) and clean water and sanitation (goal no. 6), were considered for this study. The literature search criteria comprised of automatic and manual search, resulted into 484 studies. After examining inclusion and exclusion criteria, 52 usable studies were obtained. Descriptive analysis of 52 studies was done on the basis of publication year, source of publication, research type and sustainability dimension reported. Synthesis and analysis of these 52 studies addressed the following: implication of BCT for SD, identification of research themes and gaps in available studies and future research direction. It was observed that none of the study has been done on the theme and methodology used in current study.