New research shows that considering connections between the environment and people is crucial for choosing effective actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This study is believed to be the first to look at interactions between SDGs in relation to how the environment and people affect each other. Its findings could help inform the UN's Decade of Action on SDGs and the development under the Convention on Biological Diversity of the post-2020 global biodiversity agenda.

The paper, 'Towards understanding interactions between Sustainable Development Goals: the role of environment-human linkages', was published April 2nd in Sustainability Science and authored by scientists from the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) and the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme at the University of Sussex. 

For some SDGs, including SDG 13: Climate Action, 14: Life below Water, and 15: Life on Land, actions that take into account ways in which the environment and people affect one another (‘environment-human linkages’) are central to making progress.  For example, improving the planning and management of how people use land is central to conserving terrestrial biodiversity and securing carbon stocks, and may also contribute to conserving marine biodiversity too. 

While the relevance of the environment to these particular SDGs may be evident, the researchers highlight that environment-human linkages affect the outcome of the vast majority of SDGs. 

The authors conducted a cutting-edge, in-depth analysis of how actions to achieve one SDG could influence progress towards another, particularly through these environment-human linkages. This analysis includes both the services that nature offers to people, such as regulating the climate, and the effects of people on the environment, both positive and negative. 

This helps to identify areas of overlap between SDGs, where there is scope for efficiencies in progressing against multiple SDGs simultaneously. For example, maintaining healthy vegetation on watersheds could provide clean water (SDG 6) thereby directly contributing to improving people’s health (SDG 3), while reducing greenhouse gas emissions (SDG 13) and erosion, potentially contributing to food production (SDG 2), while also contributing to protection, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial biodiversity (SDG 15). 

A deeper understanding of these linkages also helps identify the environmental safeguards that might be needed to reduce unintended negative environmental consequences - and any resulting impact on people - from some options available for progressing on individual SDGs. Such risks can then be taken into consideration in national and global policy processes and in actions being delivered around the world to progress on the SDGs.

Valerie Kapos, Head of Programme, Climate Change and Biodiversity at UNEP-WCMC, says: "Globally, only a decade remains to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and so far, progress has been insufficient. Therefore, there is a need to analyse the role of the environment in how different SDGs relate to and influence each other, so that decision makers understand the trade-offs, overlaps, and unintended consequences involved in progressing towards the SDGs."

This research was part of the Towards a Sustainable Earth Programme funded by NERC, ESRC and The Rockefeller Foundation. 
 
Read the full paper here:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00799-6