Trade-offs between social and environmental Sustainable Development Goals

By Laura Scherer, P. Behrens, A. de Koning, Reinout Heijungs, Benjamin Sprecher, Arnold Tukker. Environmental Science and Policy, 2018

242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to improve the lives of people, increase prosperity, and protect the planet. Given the large number of goals, interactions are inevitable. We analyse the interaction between two social goals (related to SDG1 Poverty and SDG10 Inequality) and three environmental goals (related to SDG13 Carbon, SDG15 Land, and SDG6 Water). We use a trade-linked, consumption-based approach to assess interactions in 166 nations, each subdivided into four income groups. We find that pursuing social goals is, generally, associated with higher environmental impacts. However, interactions differ greatly among countries and depend on the specific goals. In both interactions, carbon experiences smaller changes than land and water. Although efforts by high- and low-income groups are needed, the rich have a greater leverage to reduce humanity’s footprints. Given the importance of both social and environmental sustainability, it is crucial that quantitative interactions between SDGs be well understood so that, where needed, integrative policies can be developed.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3398c3d66b41d85afaa282646e4265b5b63ae881

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Jürgen P. Kropp
2. Anne Warchold
3. P. Pradhan
4. C. Kroll

In Environmental Engineering

1. Anne Warchold
2. P. Pradhan
3. Jürgen P. Kropp
4. C. Kroll

Citations in the corpus

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Are we successful in turning trade-offs into synergies? (2019, methodology): “Based on SDG country performance from 2010 until 2015, Sachs et al. (2018) have calculated linear trajectories for the SDGs with respect to the level that will be required to achieve each goal by 2030.”
• Variations in sustainable development goal interactions: Population, regional, and income disaggregation (2020, background): “Further works combined qualitative and quantitative modeling to detect SDG interactions (Neumann, Anderson, & Denich, 2018; Scherer et al., 2018; Tremblay, Fortier, Boucher, Riffon, & Villeneuve, 2020).”