More than a year has passed since Australia and the other 192 UN member states signed up to the UN Agenda 2030 which comprises 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) that cross all sectors of society, the environment, and the economy.
The 169 targets that support the goals are necessarily broad to gain consensus among all nations, but now the time has come for nations to tailor, or downscale, targets to the national context and to develop implementation strategies for achieving those targets.
Achieving our targets – what are the chances?
Using Australia as a case study, CSIRO researchers Dr Lei Gao and Prof. Brett Bryan have assessed the feasibility of achieving those targets that relate to land and the environment.
The study is the first to comprehensively downscale targets to a national level and to describe the future socio-economic and environmental conditions under which the targets can be achieved. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature this week.
The six targets were drawn from existing national strategies and goals and relate to:
- economic development
- food production
- water resource use
- renewable energy – biofuel production and bioenergy production
- emissions abatement
- biodiversity loss and land degradation.
Using a sophisticated, computer-based, land-use simulation model called LUTO, the researchers identified 648 plausible future pathways (environmental, socio-economic, technological, and policy pathways) spanning the three dimensions of society, the environment and the economy. The number of pathways caters for the great uncertainty inherent in predicting the future, both at national and global levels.
The chances of achieving each target under these pathways were then quantified.
Synergies, trade-offs and policy portfolios
The sobering results took Dr Gao by surprise. The modelling revealed that achieving all targets will be nigh impossible, and achieving even more than a couple of targets, even weak targets, is possible only under very specific environmental, economic, and policy conditions.
While synergies allow some targets to be achieved together, some targets are mutually exclusive and many trade-offs exist. For example, both food production targets and biodiversity / land degradation targets were achieved in only 2.9% of the 648 pathways.
“Trade-offs and synergies between targets, and between interventions for implementing targets, are some of the aspects that were glossed over during international negotiations,” explains Dr Gao.
Another big surprise is that no bioenergy targets were achieved. “Bioenergy is a small component—about 1–2%—of the Australian Government’s 2020 renewable energy target/plan, and some other analyses have suggested that it could be increased to 20–30% by 2050.”
The analysis also revealed the policy portfolios that would need to be in place for targets to have any chance of being achieved. For example, achieving the food production targets and biodiversity / land degradation targets would require strong incentives for sequestering carbon and conserving biodiversity; investment in R&D to create a step change in agricultural productivity growth; incentives for environmental plantings; and investment in infrastructure to support reforestation.
Hard choices are needed
Because of the finite nature of the land, the solution to the dilemma is obvious, says Prof. Bryan:
“You can’t extend land; there’s no more of it. All you can do is adjust what you do to be more productive and more efficient. There are no major gains to be made, there are only marginal gains. You can store carbon in trees, but the trees use more water, and you can’t grow food on land if you’re growing trees. So there are gains and losses.”
So is there a way for Australia to achieve multiple targets? And if so, which ones should we focus on?
“Yes, we can achieve some goals,” says Prof. Bryan. “Clearly they should be the ones that can’t be achieved any other way. The land sector has to do what it does well and what can’t occur anywhere else. That is producing food, conserving biodiversity and ecosystems, and halting land degradation.”
Contributions to other targets such as emissions abatement, water, and renewable energy should only be secondary considerations, he says.
“Other parts of the economy need to do some heavy lifting as well,” he adds. “Land systems will require lots of help from the clean energy, food systems, and water resource management sectors if we are to achieve multiple sustainability targets.”
A new kind of science
Though the CSIRO study applies only to Australia, it offers other nations insights into the complexity of setting meaningful sustainability targets across the three dimensions.
“We’ve brought to light some barriers and complexities to look out for and plotted ways for planning to achieve targets,” says Prof. Bryan.
What’s really needed, say the researchers, is a new kind of science that operates across disciplines and sectors at a national level—a consistent, integrated approach that can be used to aggregate at the global level.
“We are calling for new ways of analysing which are the most efficient ways to achieve sustainability goals. We don’t really know how to do that yet as scientists. We’re talking about a science that looks across all the important sectors and that can look at multiple sustainability interventions. We don’t want to look at just one aspect and later discover unintended consequences.”
The future we want
Diluting the level of ambition of targets is a risk that could see a race to the bottom.
“Our SDG targets are depicting a vision for Australia’s future that is where we want to be in 2030,” says Dr Gao. “Would we choose a ‘business as usual’ world or a prosperous one in 2030? Undoubtedly, we need ambition for a better future and we need to find development pathways for getting us there.”
“We’ve all signed up for these shared global aspirations,” adds Prof. Bryan. “This is the future we want. Now it’s time for some work. Sustainability is not simple, it’s not guaranteed. But if we do the science and help all nations plan to achieve their targets, we can make progress.
“Wealthy nations can contribute to the science and help bring other nations along. We need to go forward as a planet, not as competitors.“