Analysis of Integrated Global SDG Pursuit: Challenges and Progress

How can we more fully analyze potential progress toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, globally and by country? Methodological challenges include (1) the comprehensiveness of issue coverage, integration of causal elaboration, and geographic detail in available models; (2) clear quantification of goal targets; and (3) specification of scenario interventions that connect meaningfully to the potential leverage of agents. This study uses a large-scale, global but country-based analytical system that tightly integrates multiple issue-area models to push against methodological challenges. It explores the prospects for progress toward selected quantified targets across all goals, using scenarios that consider potential agency-linked interventions relative to the Current Path (CP). The scenarios distinguish interventions focused on Human Development (HD) and natural system sustainability (NSS) plus a Combined SDG scenario (CSDG). Even with a large, integrated push through 2030 and 2050, the world in aggregate will fail to reach many targets, and a great many of the 188 countries represented will fall short. Also of interest is possible tension between the underlying thrusts of HD- and NSS-oriented interventions. Both the Current Path of key variables and intervention leverage constraints make NSS goals harder to reach than HD goals. Because synergies of action considerably outweigh trade-offs, however, complementarity better characterizes the two intervention sets.