The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals

By Viktoria Spaiser, Shyam Ranganathan, R. B. Swain, David J. T. Sumpter. 2016

288 citations recorded by the source corpus.

ABSTRACT In 2015, the UN adopted a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty, establish socioeconomic inclusion and protect the environment. Critical voices such as the International Council for Science (ICSU), however, have expressed concerns about the potential incompatibility of the SDGs, specifically the incompatibility of socio-economic development and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we test, quantify and model the alleged inconsistency of SDGs. Our analyses show which SDGs are consistent and which are conflicting. We measure the extent of inconsistency and conclude that the SDG agenda will fail as a whole if we continue with business as usual. We further explore the nature of the inconsistencies using dynamical systems models, which reveal that the focus on economic growth and consumption as a means for development underlies the inconsistency. Our models also show that there are factors which can contribute to development (health programmes, government investment) on the one hand and ecological sustainability (renewable energy) on the other, without triggering the conflict between incompatible SDGs.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/068e010e1aa20dc216d38bc74c48532f9dd1f2fe

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. F. Wallentin
2. R. B. Swain
3. M. Howden
4. K. O’Brien
5. S. Moser
6. M. Reed
7. I. Fazey
8. J. Kenter

In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

1. F. Wallentin
2. R. B. Swain
3. M. Reed
4. K. O’Brien
5. S. Moser
6. P. Olsson
7. I. Fazey
8. J. Kenter

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. F. Wallentin
2. R. B. Swain
3. K. O’Brien
4. S. Moser

Citations in the corpus

• Achieving sustainable development goals: predicaments and strategies (2019, methodology): “Furthermore, there is an inherent conflict between the socio-economic development and ecological sustainability, which makes it challenging to determine the most effective strategy to create sustainable development (Redclift 2005; Spaiser et al. 2016).”
• Ten essentials for action-oriented and second order energy transitions, transformations and climate change research (2018, background): “First-order transformation research involves describing and analysing processes of change [53,54], where results are then disseminated to beneficiaries through some kind of knowledge transfer [55].”