Spatio-temporal changes in the causal interactions among Sustainable Development Goals in China

Abstract

Extensive efforts have been dedicated to deciphering the interactions associated with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, these developments are hampered by a lack of efficient strategies to avoid beneficial synergies being offset by harmful trade-offs. To fill these gaps, we used causal diagnosis and network analysis methods to construct 1302 directed networks of SDGs for 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2020. We observed a dramatic offsetting effect of SDG synergies and trade-offs in China from 2000 to 2020, with approximately 27% of trade-off indicator pairs turning into synergies and about 25% of the synergy indicator pairs turning into trade-offs. However, our findings suggested that prioritising the progress of high-frequency indicators in virtuous cycles could multiply the positive systemic effects of the SDGs. Moreover, controlling the transition from passive to active in the trade-off network of SDGs remains a challenge in advancing the SDGs holistically.

Forecasting Future Development under the Interactions among Sustainable Development Goals

“…The SDGs aim at synergistic development, and the indicators under each goal are equally important, so each indicator has the same weight in the aggregation process [22]. The standardized 60 indicators were aggregated into 16 goals (except SDG14 [23]) using the arithmetic mean method.…”

Evaluation method of sustainable development of plateau lakeside cities under the perspective of new development philosophy and its empirical research

“…In summary, based on the perspective of the new development philosophy, taking the five dimensions of "innovation, coordination, greenness, development and sharing" as the firstlevel objectives, and with the help of the United Nations SDGs system and the interpretation of the 17 major objectives in the Country Programs, the objectives of the five dimensions have been refined, and the internal indicators have been constructed to reflect the common characteristics of sustainable urban development and the special characteristics of sustainable development of plateau lakeside cities. At the same time, with the help of Yunnan Province's "14th Five-Year Plan" and "3815" goals, and with reference to the sustainable development index system of Deqing (http:// www.deqing-sdgs.cn/), Shenzhen (Shenzhen Sustainable Development Assessment Report 2016, Lincang (Lincang city sustainable development plan (2018-2030), 2019) and other cities (Cao et al, 2023;Ndeketeya and Dundu, 2023), the connotative indexes were refined, and localized specific indexes were constructed on the basis of quantifiable and accessible data, and the index system shown in Table 1 was finally obtained, which includes 26 connotative indexes and 84 specific indexes.…”