From Incremental Steps To Transformations: Leveraging Interactions Across The SDGs.pdf

Implementing the SDGs as an integrated set, taking full account of the interdependencies between them, creates opportunities for reframing development around people and the planet, promoting policy coherence, creating efficiencies, targeting investments, and promoting stronger buy-in. Achieving the SDGs together as an "indivisible whole" is not only possible, but the only way of achieving the SDGs.

A Guide to SDG interactions: from science to implementation, published by the International Council for Science in 2017, provides a framework for describing the level of interdependency between goals and targets. It shows that actions under one goal can reinforce progress in other goals, providing opportunities for co-benefits across multiple policy domains.

There is a special urgency for acting now on SDG interactions as current decisions are locking-in unsustainable pathways that will make it more difficult to attain all the SDGs. A long-term approach to investments in SDG policy-making is needed, fully realizing the opportunities of synergistic actions across SDGs and mindful of the potential trade-offs.

Wider coordinated efforts are needed to understand the long-term pathways to achieve the SDGs and the potential spill overs across policy domains, and across time and geographical boundaries. The World in 2050 is a global research initiative launched by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and the Stockholm Resilience Center (SRC).

The scientific and technology community has a crucial role to play in providing the evidence, expertise, and data to inform, measure, and monitor the implementation of the SDGs and help deliver solutions. To inform the SDGs, fundamental as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science and novel approaches are needed to identify policy options and solutions.

The science-policy-society interface needs to be strengthened at all levels, from local to global, and mechanisms for the translation of evidence into policy need to be developed that fully take into account social and political contexts. For the road to 2030 to be evidence-paved, there are crucial elements of a scientific advisory system to support the implementation, delivery, and evaluation of the SDGs.

Business as usual is not an option, and the window for transforming our modes of development is narrowing as time goes on. Achieving sustainable development requires better integration, more coordination, and cooperation at an unprecedented scale. To enable societal transformations, it is necessary to strengthen collaboration between communities of researchers, practitioners, decision makers, and other stakeholders to jointly frame questions that need to be addressed.

Alongside technology, governance, societal and cultural norms and values, and behavioural change have a huge role in achieving the SDGs. Globally, values and norms differ across and among diverse societal groups, but we all face the common challenge of developing sustainable futures for our societies. A global alignment where common ground is struck on important values and recognition of shared responsibilities can contribute to a global vision for sustainable development.