Crises and disasters represent a good opportunity to review prevailing development policies and strategies. Given the complexity, intertwining, and succession of crises, as well as the implications of these crises on achieving the sustainable development goals, the current era—which is regarded as one of the most challenging in modern history—may offer a chance to conduct an objective review of the policies and strategies in order to advance the achievement of the SDGs, which nations worldwide agreed to adopt in 2015 as a roadmap for achieving sustainable development by 2030.

The current moment has come to provide an opportunity to review the current faltering path of sustainable development, and to search for an alternative development path; hence, academics, researchers, and development practitioners have called to adopt an economic-development model alternative to the prevailing neoliberal economic model, which enables it to withstand the multiplicity and complexity of the current crises. In this context, the importance of cooperatives became apparent, and they were once again mentioned as one of the main entities of the alternative economy, or social and solidarity economy.

Given the above, this issue seeks to identify cooperatives and their role in achieving sustainable development in light of international, regional, and national givens, taking into account the pivotal and important role that cooperatives have played in Egypt throughout its history since the establishment of the first cooperative in 1908 until the present day. This issue also seeks to address cooperatives as a form of social and solidarity economy, or alternative economy, and as one of the forms of ownership that the Egyptian Constitution stipulates be preserved.