Climate change mitigation and SDGs: modelling the regional potential of promising mitigation measures and assessing their impact on other SDGs

ABSTRACT

Measures that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also have impacts on achieving other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given the enormous challenge of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, insight into these impacts provides information on how to improve the feasibility of climate change mitigation measures by maximizing the co-benefits and managing the risks of possible trade-offs across SDGs. In this paper, we explore the impact of 20 promising climate mitigation measures on achieving the other SDGs for 11 world regions. Using the IMAGE modelling framework, the paper explores the GHG emission reduction potential of these measures aggregated by the sector under three scenarios. Based on peer-reviewed articles, the impact of the measures on other SDGs is assessed for the top three sectors with the highest GHG reduction potential in each region. We conclude that the number of synergies between the selected climate change mitigation measures and other SDGs dwarf the number of trade-offs in all regions. The magnitude of these synergies and trade-offs, however, varies by regional and socio-economic context. In high- and middle-income regions, the mitigation measures show few trade-offs that are generally associated with technology choices that could aggravate inequality and impact biodiversity. In low-income regions, some measures, especially land-use related ones, could interfere with efforts to reduce poverty, end hunger and improve well-being, if not complemented by additional policies that aim to protect the poor from increasing food and energy prices.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change mitigation
• sustainable development goals
• co-benefits and trade-offs

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this paper was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands, through its Directorate-General of Trade and International Cooperation. The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of the work done by Heleen van Soest (van Soest et al. 2021) and Detlef van Vuuren to this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Availability of data

Data available on request from the authors