There is a growing recognition that universally adopted SDGs can only be achieved through an unprecedented transformations of technologies, economies, and societies worldwide.
According to the Report issued by the “World in 2050 initiative” (TWI2050), six Transformations needed to Achieve SDGs, long term sustainability and beyond: i) Human capacity and demography; ii) Consumption and production; iii) Decarbonization and energy, iv) Food, biosphere and water; v) Smart cities and vi) Digital revolution. The Report provides policy recommendations on how to achieve integrated pathways that implement these transformations, which require innovative governance structures and capabilities, metrics of development, political action and the formation of actors of change on local, national and global levels.
The Report was presented at the 2018 High Level Political Forum on sustainable development (HLPF 2018). TWI2050 was launched by the International Institute forApplied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN),and the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), to provide scientific foundations for the 2030 Agenda.
The Report “Six Transformations needed to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals”is focused on the analysis of the systems and institutions, which we need to have in order to bring us to a very different sustainable future. The six transformations require strategies, governance mechanisms, and adaptive capacities that enable our societes to cope with a range of the disruptive changes and to develop pathways towards sustainability. This implies an “intellectual fusion between disciplinary ways of thinking”. The existing sectoral approach to governance that separates humans from nature is not getting the society any farther, according to the Report. There is a need to adopt a holistic approach to address complex socioenvironmental dynamics that have driven us into the current sustainability conundrum.
According to the Report, existing metrics of development also suffers from reductionism and gives a very narrow picture of what the human wellbeing is. “Different cultures and populations now interact principally around the dimension ‘wealth’ when they judge themselves, compare among each other and transact exchanges. This has increased the emphasis on productivity and growth and has led to the over-consumption of natural and social capital in many regions. Other dimensions such as religion, community solidarity, art, culture, have decreased in importance as primary drivers of decision-making except among focused subsets of societies whose interaction creates ‘hotspots’”, says the Report.
