Anticipated impacts of achieving SDG targets on forests - a review

Jamie A. Carr, Gillian Petrokofsky, Dominick V. Spracklen, Simon L. Lewis, Dilys Roe, Nicholas Trull, Adriana Vidal, Sylvia Wicander, John Worthington-Hill and Susannah M. Sallu

Forest Policy and Economics, 2021, vol. 126, issue C

Abstract: Sustainable development requires knowledge of trade-offs and synergies between environmental and non-environmental goals and targets. Understanding the ways in which positive progress in matters of development not directly concerned with the environment can affect the natural environment, whether for better or for worse, can allow policymakers and development agencies to avoid the negative impacts of their actions, while capitalising on mutually beneficial opportunities. Through a systematic review of the literature, we consider the impacts of UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets on forest ecosystems, and identify 63 targets associated with potentially beneficial, damaging or mixed (i.e. damaging and/or beneficial depending on context or location) impacts. Types of impact are not uniform within SDGs, nor necessarily within individual targets. Targets relating to energy and infrastructure are among the most damaging and best studied, while targets expected to potentially result in beneficial outcomes, typically associated with social progress and well-being, have been investigated to a much lesser degree, especially in the context of external interventions. Thirty-eight targets have some variation in the direction of their impacts (i.e. at least one record with mixed impacts, or two or more records with different directions), suggesting the potential to achieve beneficial over damaging impacts in many cases. We provide illustrative examples of a range of impacts and use our findings to provide recommendations for researchers, development agencies and policymakers.

Keywords: Sustainable development goals; Targets; Development intervention; Environmental trade-offs; Synergy; Forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934121000290
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:126:y:2021:i:c:s1389934121000290

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2021.102423

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().