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The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a holistic and ambitious agenda for transforming the world towards societal well-being, economic prosperity, and environmental protection. Achieving the SDGs is, however, challenged by the performance of interconnected sectors and the complexity of their interactions which drive non-linear system responses, tipping points, and spillover effects. Systems modelling, as an integrated way of thinking about and modelling multisectoral dynamics, can help explain how feedback interactions within and among different sectors can lead to broader system transformation and progress towards the SDGs. Here, we review how system dynamics, as a prominent systems modelling approach, can inform and contribute to sustainability research and implementation, framed by the SDGs. We systematically analyse 357 system dynamics studies undertaken at the local scale where the most important SDG impacts and their initiators are often located, published between 2015 (i.e. SDGs’ inception) and 2020. We analyse the studies to illuminate strengths and limitations in four key areas: diversity of scope; interdisciplinarity of the approaches; the role of stakeholder participation; and the analysis of SDG interactions. Our review highlights opportunities for a better consideration of societal aspects of sustainable development (e.g. poverty, inequality) in modelling efforts; integrating with new interdisciplinary methods to leverage system dynamics modelling capabilities; improving genuine stakeholder engagement for credibility and impacts on the ground; and a more in-depth analysis of SDG interactions (i.e. synergies and trade-offs) with the feedback-rich structure of system dynamics models.

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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognise the importance of action across all scales to achieve a sustainable future. To contribute to overall national- and global-scale SDG achievement, local communities need to focus on a locally-relevant subset of goals and understand potential future pathways for key drivers which influence local sustainability. We developed a participatory method to co-create local socioeconomic pathways by downscaling the SDGs and driving forces of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) via a local case study in southern Australia through contextual analysis and community engagement. We linked the SSPs and SDGs by identifying driving forces and describing how they affect the achievement of local SDGs. We co-created six local socioeconomic pathways with the local community which track towards futures with different levels of fulfilment of the SDGs and each encompasses a narrative storyline incorporating locally-specific ideas from the community. We tested and validated the local pathways with the community. This method extends the SSPs in two dimensions–into the broader field of sustainability via the SDGs, and by recontextualizing them at the local scale. The local socioeconomic pathways can contribute to achieving local sustainability goals from the bottom up in alignment with global initiatives. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11625-021-00921-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The achievement of global sustainability agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, relies on transformational change across society, economy, and environment that are co‐created in a transdisciplinary exercise by all stakeholders. Within this context, environmental and societal change is increasingly understood and represented via participatory modeling for genuine engagement with multiple collaborators in the modeling process. Despite the diversity of participatory modeling methods to promote engagement and co‐creation, it remains uncertain what the extent and modes of participation are in different contexts, and how to select the suitable methods to use in a given situation. Based on a review of available methods and specification of potential contextual requirements, we propose a unifying framework to guide how collaborators of different backgrounds can work together and evaluate the suitability of participatory modeling methods for co‐creating sustainability pathways. The evaluation of method suitability promises the integration of concepts and approaches necessary to address the complexities of problems at hand while ensuring robust methodologies based on well‐tested evidence and negotiated among participants. Using two illustrative case studies, we demonstrate how to explore and evaluate the choice of methods for participatory modeling in varying contexts. The insights gained can inform creative participatory approaches to pathway development through tailored combinations of methods that best serve the specific sustainability context of particular case studies.