NAVIGATE/ENGAGE Expert Workshop 20-22 September 2021

Modeling SDG interventions
Bjoern Soergel (PIK, Germany)

Bjoern Soergel presented work performed with the energy-economy-land-climate modeling framework REMIND-MAgPIE, and additional downstream models for SDG indicators. The analysis demonstrated that development, resource efficiency, and moderate lifestyle change and climate policies as driven in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios, are insufficient to meet all SDGs. Additional, sustainable development interventions will be required, which included in their analysis: global cooperation, national and international redistributive policies that can be funded from carbon pricing revenues, and interventions in food and energy (focusing on e.g. the co-benefits of healthy diets for climate, land, water, nitrogen cycle, biodiversity). Dietary transitions can have large impacts on land and water. While there are still SDG achievement gaps in 2030, these can be largely closed by 2050. 

Bjoern Soergel is a researcher at the Potsdam institute for Climate Impact Research and investigates the interactions between climate change, mitigation efforts, global inequality, and sustainable development. His presentation is based on an article recently published in Nature Climate Change entitled “A Sustainable Development Pathway for Climate Action within the UN 2030 Agenda.”