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Sustainable Development Goals and risks: The Yin and the Yang of the paths towards sustainability

  • Tackling Risks through the Sustainable Development Goals
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Abstract

The United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define a path towards a sustainable future, but given that uncertainty characterises the outcomes of any SDG-related actions, risks in the implementation of the Agenda need to be addressed. At the same time, most risk assessments are narrowed to sectoral approaches and do not refer to SDGs. Here, on the basis of a literature review and workshops, it is analysed how SDGs and risks relate to each other’s in different communities. Then, it is formally demonstrated that, as soon as the mathematical definition of risks is broadened to embrace a more systemic perspective, acting to maintain socio-environmental systems within their sustainability domain can be done by risk minimisation. This makes Sustainable Development Goals and risks “the Yin and the Yang of the paths towards sustainability”. Eventually, the usefulness of the SDG-risk nexus for both sustainability and risk management is emphasized.

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Notes

  1. Due to the extremely wide scope of environmental risks and SDGs, this review is by essence non-exhaustive.

  2. Especially Global Catastrophic Risks (GCRs), i.e. high impact/low probability events that can trigger the collapse of humanity. GCRs are often defined by a loss of > 10% of the population (Avin et al. 2018).

  3. PEER is a network of European environmental research institutes. Research particularly addresses interactions between man and nature with a cross-sectorial and cross-disciplinary perspective, with strong interactions with stakeholders.

  4. Risks from Natural Hazards at Hazardous Installations. An example is the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the resulting tsunami and Fukushima nuclear accident (Krausmann et al. 2019).

  5. In the framework of Appendix S2, its inverse identifies to the probability of failure for the system restricted to the sole hazard.

  6. Sustainability taxonomy aims at scanning development projects with criteria related to the SDGs. https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/sustainable-finance/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en.

  7. Also denoted the death probability of the system, which is acknowledged by the “d” index in the \(p_{dt}\) notation.

  8. For a stationary system, the failure probability identifies to the inverse of a return period,\(T\), and a sustainable situation verifies \(T > > \left( {t_{h} - t_{o} } \right)\).

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Acknowledgements

All participants (meetings workshops, etc.) of the Tackling and managing Risks with SDGs (PEER-TRISD) initiative are warmly thanked for their inputs that contributed to raise the ideas behind this paper. Also, C. Rios Rojas is thanked for useful comments on the manuscript. The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees and to Bo Söderström whose insightful comments helped produce a better paper. INRAE is member of Labex OSUG.

Funding

Authors acknowledge support from PEER consortium to the TRISD project. N. Eckert was further supported by the French National Research Agency through the Statistical modelling for the assessment and mitigation of mountain risks in a changing environment—SMARTEN program under Grant Agreement ANR- 20-Tremplin-ERC8-0001.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRAE, UR ETNA / Université Grenoble Alpes, 2 rue de la papeterie, 38402, St Martin d’Heres, France

    Nicolas Eckert & Florie Giacona

  2. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Torgarden, P.O. Box 5685, 7485, Trondheim, Norway

    Graciela Rusch & Manuela Panzacchi

  3. Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Latokartanonkaari 11, 00790, Helsinki, Finland

    Jari Lyytimäki, Claire Mosoni & Jyri Mustajoki

  4. Karlshochschule International University, Karlstrasse 26-28, 71633, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Robert Lepenies

  5. Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Anders Branth Pedersen

  6. French Permanent Mission, 52 Corso del Rinascimento, 00186, Rome, Italy

    Raoul Mille

  7. INRAE, 2 rue de la papeterie, BP76, 38402, Saint-Martin-d’Hères Cedex, France

    Didier Richard

  8. Department of Conservation Biology and Social-Ecological Systems, Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Permoserstr. 15, 04318, Leipzig, Germany

    Kurt Jax

Authors
  1. Nicolas Eckert
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  2. Graciela Rusch
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  3. Jari Lyytimäki
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  4. Robert Lepenies
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  5. Florie Giacona
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  6. Manuela Panzacchi
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  7. Claire Mosoni
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  8. Anders Branth Pedersen
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  9. Jyri Mustajoki
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  10. Raoul Mille
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  11. Didier Richard
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  12. Kurt Jax
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolas Eckert.

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Eckert, N., Rusch, G., Lyytimäki, J. et al. Sustainable Development Goals and risks: The Yin and the Yang of the paths towards sustainability. Ambio 52, 683–701 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01800-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01800-5

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