Co-creating local socioeconomic pathways for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an agenda which recognises the importance of action across all scales and sectors to achieve a sustainable future. A bottom-up approach to realizing the SDGs, led by communities, can be achieved through localization – the downscaling of goals to the local level, allowing for heterogeneity and diversity at the local scale. In order to direct decision-making for a sustainable future, local communities require local sustainability pathways to understand potential outcomes under different conditions. The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are a framework that can be adapted for use in different contexts. We developed a participatory method to downscale both the SDGs and the SSPs and link them to co-create locally relevant pathways for sustainable futures through the development of a sustainability pathway space. We localized the SDGs and the SSPs through contextual analysis and community engagement, and co-developed Local Sustainability Pathways (LSPs) with a rural community in Victoria, Australia. By using different combinations of sustainability priorities, applying the concept of the sustainability dimensions of economic growth, social inclusivity, and environment, we developed six new LSPs which depict different levels of fulfilment of the SDGs. We tested the LSPs to ensure they were distinct, that they spanned a wide range of sustainable development outcomes, and that they were credible and consistent. 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 LSPs can contribute to achieving local sustainability goals from the bottom up in alignment with global initiatives.

Diversifying models for analysing global change scenarios and sustainability pathways

“…However, large-scale and global scenarios in reality translate into local changes in human interactions with the environment (Moallemi et al, 2020b). Grassroots solutions led by local communities, cities, and businesses can also make synergies with the aspirations of the higher scales and significantly impact the unfolding of higher-level sustainability scenarios (Bandari et al, 2021; Bennett et al, 2021; Szetey et al, 2021a, 2021b). This brings new challenges for modelling the cross-scale dynamics of scenarios that can account for both higher spatial and temporal resolutions where policy-making (e.g.…”

Eight Archetypes of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Synergies and Trade‐Offs

“…However, the use of archetypes for sustainability has remained primarily focused on higher (often national, regional, or global) scales, missing potential interactions that can happen at a local level or across scales. More locally focused approaches to the SDGs are required to better represent and account for bottom‐up causal drivers (Bandari et al., 2021; Ningrum et al., 2022; Szetey et al., 2021a, 2021b). Multiscale approaches are also required to create nested patterns of interactions (e.g., regional supported by country‐level sub‐patterns [Sietz et al., 2017]) and incorporate multiple levels of abstraction, corresponding to interactions across scale (Sietz et al., 2019).…”

Methods for Analysing Steering Effects of Global Goals

“…Participatory research entails action in that the participants are not only engaged in the scientific inquiry but also in thinking of and implementing solutions for the problem at hand. In research on the Sustainable Development Goals, examples of the application of this method include the co-creation of pathways and knowledge for goal implementation at the local level (Lepore, Hall and Tandon 2020;Szetey et al 2021), as well as the development of participatory methods to study the Sustainable Development Goals in academic curricula (Trott, Weinberg McMeeking 2018).…”