The Sustainable Development Goals and the systems approach to sustainability

Edward Barbier and Joanne Burgess

No 2017-28, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: The authors explore the link between the systems approach to sustainability and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were formally adopted by the UN in 2015. The systems approach depicts sustainable development as the intersection of the goals attributed to three interlinked systems: environmental (or ecological), economic and social. The authors illustrate how each of the 17 SDGs can be characterized as a goal primarily attributed either to the environmental, economic or social system, and as suggested by the systems approach, there may be important tradeoffs in attempting to attain all these goals simultaneously. By adopting standard methods of the theory of choice and welfare under imposed quantities, the authors show that is possible to measure the welfare effects of an increase in the indicator level for one SDG by identifying the tradeoffs that occur with achieving another goal. They present a quantitative assessment of current progress and tradeoffs among the 17 SDGs, using a representative indicator for each goal. They then conduct a preliminary welfare analysis of these tradeoffs through employing the approach developed in this paper. Although this analysis focuses on the potential tradeoffs among SDGs, the approach could also be applied to show complementarities, or "winwins", in simultaneous progress among two or more SDGs. Such an analysis can help in the design of appropriate policy interventions to achieve specific SDGs, minimizing the potentially negative knock-on effects on some goals whilst capitalizing on the positive win-win impacts on other SDGs.

Keywords: sustainable development; Sustainable Development Goals; systems approach; tradeoffs; United Nations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 O20 Q01 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (73)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The sustainable development goals and the systems approach to sustainability (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:201728

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