The Sustainable Development Goals: assessing interlinkages, trade-offs and synergies for policy design

Rickels, Wilfried / Jan Börner / Adolf Kloke-Lesch / Guido Schmidt-Traub (eds.)
External Publications (2018)

published on Economics (Special Issue)

Humankind is on an unsustainable path. The present patterns of global development threaten societal cohesion, undermine prosperity, and consume natural resources and services faster than they regenerate and thus exert unsustainable pressure on climate, ecosystems, and biodiversity. The universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in September 2015, may present a turning point towards the design of more sustainable national and international policies in which all countries both rich or poor, can take part. The Agenda emphasizes that the interlinkages and integrated nature of the SDGs are of crucial importance in ensuring that the purpose of the new Agenda is realized. Moreover, possible trade-offs have to be dealt with and synergies will be challenging to achieve. Comprehensive research to transparently reveal interlinkages, potential trade-offs and synergies between the various goals and targets is crucial to guide policy and facilitate civil society as well as business engagement. Accordingly, analytical models and practical tools are needed to i) identify interlinkages, ii) assess trade-offs, iii) identify priority action, and iv) promote synergies by adopting multi-purpose solutions. The disciplinary (in particular from the field of economics and political science) and interdisciplinary research articles and discussion papers of the Special Issue deal with issues as

conceptual and theoretical analyses of SDG interlinkages, potential trade-offs and synergies,
qualitative and quantitative assessment of potential trade-offs among SDGs and related policies,
applications of data dimensionality reduction methods and/or structure revealing methods to measure SDG goals,
evaluations and case-studies of sub-national, national, regional, and international action towards achieving SDG.

About the author

Kloke-Lesch, Adolf

Urban and regional planning