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Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals

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Quantifying and Modelling the Incompatibility of Sustainable Development Goals International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology ISSN: 1350-4509 (Print) 1745-2627 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsdw20 The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals Viktoria Spaiser, Shyam Ranganathan, Ranjula Bali Swain & David J. T. Sumpter To cite this article: Viktoria Spaiser, Shyam Ranganathan, Ranjula Bali Swain & David J. T. Sumpter (2017) The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals, International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 24:6, 457-470, DOI: 10.1080/13504509.2016.1235624 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2016.1235624 © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa View supplementary material UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 23 Sep 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1910 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tsdw20 Download by: [University of Leeds] Date: 15 September 2017, At: 06:56 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & WORLD ECOLOGY, 2017 VOL. 24, NO. 6, 457–470 https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2016.1235624 The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals Viktoria Spaiser a, Shyam Ranganathan b, Ranjula Bali Swain c,d and David J. T. Sumpter e aSchool of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK; bDepartment of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA; cSchool of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden; dMistra Center for Sustainable Markets (MISUM), Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden; eDepartment of Mathematics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY In 2015, the UN adopted a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate Received 5 May 2016 poverty, establish socioeconomic inclusion and protect the environment. Critical voices such Accepted 4 September 2016 as the International Council for Science (ICSU), however, have expressed concerns about the KEYWORDS potential incompatibility of the SDGs, specifically the incompatibility of socio-economic Sustainable development development and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we test, quantify and model goals; sustainable the alleged inconsistency of SDGs. Our analyses show which SDGs are consistent and which development; dynamical are conflicting. We measure the extent of inconsistency and conclude that the SDG agenda systems modelling; factor will fail as a whole if we continue with business as usual. We further explore the nature of the analysis; feature selection; inconsistencies using dynamical systems models, which reveal that the focus on economic UN data revolution growth and consumption as a means for development underlies the inconsistency. Our models also show that there are factors which can contribute to development (health programmes, government investment) on the one hand and ecological sustainability (renew- able energy) on the other, without triggering the conflict between incompatible SDGs. Introduction developing and developed countries held accounta- ble for meeting the goals (Leadership Council of the The concept of sustainable development was con- Sustainable Development Solutions Network 2015; ceived in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission as United National Department of Economic and Social ‘development that meets the needs of the present Affairs 2015). without compromising the ability of future genera- The International Council for Science (ICSU) tions to meet their own needs’ (World Commission reviewed the SDGs and criticized ‘that the frame- on Environment and Development 1987). Since then, work as a whole might not be internally consistent it has been repeatedly challenged with the argument – and as a result not be sustainable’, if interlinkages, that economic growth is not sustainable because it is complex dynamics and conflicting relations accompanied by a depletion of natural resources and between the goals are ignored (International deterioration of environmental service (Repetto et al. Council for Science and International Social Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 06:56 15 September 2017 1989; Pearce & Atkinson 1993; Hamilton & Clemens Science Council 2015, p.9). The conflict between 1999). Redclift (2005) even called sustainable develop- ecological sustainability and socio-economic pro- ment an oxymoron that disguises the inherent con- gression is of particular concern to the ICSU. flict of human and natural systems. And Dasgupta However, the ICSU does not provide empirical evi- (2013) noted that ‘the entire architecture of contem- dence for its concerns. In fact, little is known about porary development thinking is stacked against nat- the nature and extent of the repeatedly claimed ure’ (p.2). Despite this challenge not being sufficiently incompatibility of sustainability and development addressed, the world now prepares to take up the (Stern et al. 1996;Redclift2002, 2005;Luke2005; ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Saboori & Sulaiman 2013;Brown2015). The SDGs go beyond the earlier Millennium The aim of this study is to use the increasing Development Goals (MDG) programme in that, as amount of data available on development well as addressing extreme poverty, they also focus (Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development on socio-economic inclusion and ecological sustain- Solutions Network 2015) to investigate potential con- ability. Seventeen SDG goals (Figure 1) have been tradictions in the SDGs. We compiled an extensive, defined by the UN for the next 15 years, with both cross-country time series data set, including data from CONTACT Viktoria Spaiser [email protected] Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 458 V. SPAISER ET AL. Sustainable Development .98 .93 .77 End Poverty Social Inclusion Environment .92 .91 .73 .91 .93 .93 .25 .27 .61 .29 .29 .38 .14 .10 .43 .26 CM Pov Hun Wat* San* Ed* GINI YU Vio WP* Int* CO2** PL* PS* AE* AP SDG Goal Indicator Proportion of people who have less then 1. Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere 1.25 $ per day (Pov) 2. End hunger, achieve food security Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy intake (Hug) 3. Ensure healthy lifes and promote well-being Child Mortality: Number of children under for all at all ages five dying per 1000 births (CM) 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality Education: proportion of children getting education seconday school education (Ed) 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all Proportion of women in national women and girls parliaments (WP) 6. Ensure availability and sustainable Proportion of people having access to management of water drinking water (Wat) 7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable and Proportion of energy production coming from sustainable energy for all alternative, non-fossil energy sources (AE) 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable Proportion of people under 25 without economic growth and decent work for all employment (YU) 9. Resilient Infrastructure, sustainable Number of people having access to the industrialization and foster innovation Internet per 1000 inhabitants (Int) 10. Reduce inequality within and GINI coefficient (GINI) among countries 11. Make cities / human settlements inclusive, Proportion of people having access to safe, resilient and sustainable sanitation facilities (San) 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and Number of deaths due to air pollution per production patterns 1000 inhabitants (AP) Take urgent action to combat climate 13. CO2 emissions per capita (CO2) changes and its impacts 14. Conserve and sustainably use the Proportion of bordering sea areas protected oceans, seas and marine resources by law (PS) 15. Protect, restore and sustainably use Proportion of protected land area overlay terrestrial ecosystems and forests with biodiversity (PL) 16. Promote peaceful societies, access to Number of homicides per 1000 justice, effective institutions inhabitants (Vio) Establish global partnership for 17. administrative goal, not measured sustainable development Figure 1. CFA Results. The factors are shown in ellipses, while the observed indicators in rectangles. The numbers above the arrows are standardized factor loadings. *Variables were reverse coded to ensure a common directionality of all observed indicators. **1/CO2. Model Fits: CFI: 0.91, TLI: 0.89, SRMR: 0.08, RMSEA: 0.06. Full colour available online. Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 06:56 15 September 2017 the World Bank, Polity IV, CIRI Human Rights Data suggest how the resulting dynamical systems models Project, Freedom House and the Heritage can be used to monitor sustainable development. Foundation/the Wall Street Journal. The compiled data set consists of 1,423 economic, social, environ- mental and political indicators for 217 countries, cov- Data and methods ering the period 1980–2014
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