Fears of SDG clashes overblown, study finds

[LONDON] Fears that progress towards some Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may undermine achievements in others are largely unfounded, a science-based analysis of their interactions has concluded.

The SDGs were designed with linkages between thehealth,environmental, and social-economic aspects of development in mind. But it is unclear whether they will reinforce or detract from each other in practice, particularly where overcoming poverty clashes with increasing sustainability.One study, for example, has found that environmental protection policies might get in the way of reducing food prices.

现在reportpublished by the International Council for Science (ICSU), which hadpreviously raised concernsabout trade-offs, suggests the targets mostly reinforce each other.

“Climate-friendly strategies tend to give not only emissions reductions but also strong outcomes in agriculture, health and energy access.”

Måns Nilsson

It says that making these dynamics explicit, and understanding them, can help policymakers set priorities for implementing the SDGs “to ensure that progress made in some areas is not made at the expense of progress in others”.

The team assigned a score to each of over 300 interactions between targets forbeplay下载官网西西软件(SDG2), health (SDG3),18beplay (SDG3) and oceans (SDG7), using a combination of literature reviews and expert judgement. They found three-quarters of the interactions (238) were positive; just a fifth (66) were negative, and less than four per cent (12) were neutral.

“Given the difficulty of reaching political agreement on advancing various goals, it is quite interesting that there is such a large dominance of positive interactions and relatively few negative ones,” says Måns Nilsson, research director at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden and lead author of the report, published by the International Council for Science (ICSU).

他说，注意动态可以节省时间和金钱。For example, promoting gender equality turns out to be a cost-effective way to reach better health outcomes or better agricultural productivity amongst smallholder farmers.

应对气候变化的出现是跨目标削减收益的领域。

他告诉他说：“在不同部门采用的气候友好策略往往会减少排放量，而且还提供了农业，健康，能源通道或城市发展和公民流动性的强劲成果。”beplay下载官网西西软件。网。

另一方面，有一些区域需要协调policy。该报告建议，保护海洋和沿海生态系统可能会遇到经济活动并限制创造就业活动 - 该案件应促使决策者协调和解决权衡取舍。

But coordination entails a multidisciplinary approach that is hard for some poor countries to achieve, says Allam Ahmed, senior lecturer at the University of Sussex and founding president of the World Association for Sustainable Development.

“They need ministries to work together: education, health, environment and so on. [But] ministers don't even know how to work with this multidisciplinary overlap.”

他批评该报告未能包括与发展中国家和其他研究机构的合作伙伴进行磋商 - 这意味着它无法捕捉穷国内的现实，最终在整个国家概括。

He also says the report needs to be simpler if it is to reach policymakers responsible for implementing the goals.

他说：“没有政府拒绝某种东西的想法，这些想法将帮助他们改善自己的福祉。”“但是他们无法理解科学或写作方式：首先，他们没有为此做出贡献。”

He added that Nigeria has resorted to creating a special unit to translate such reports.

但是尼尔森说，在此阶段，该报告旨在展示该框架的工作原理 - 下一步是将其作为针对各个国家 /地区量身定制的实用工具。