Page - 15 - in options, Volume winter 2015/2016

15winter 2015/2016 + optionswww.iiasa.ac.at Imagine a world where poverty does not exist; where people have access to all the water, energy, and food that they need; where women enjoy equal rights, equal pay, and equal access to education in every country; where  forests are preserved, the ocean is clean, and climate change has  been halted.Reading about the problems in today’s world—wars in the Middle East, the refugee crisis in Europe, wildfires across North America—this may sound like an unrealistic fantasy. But world leaders have now agreed on a set of goals aimed at making major progress on these issues by 2030. Although it is clear that the challenges are large, the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted this fall aim to provide a road map to dealing with the interconnected challenges of poverty, inequality, and environmental change. The SDGs come with 169 indicators of progress and also recognize, for the first time, the linkages between consumption in the developed world and scarcity in the developing world. IIASA Deputy Director General Nebojsa Nakicenovic says, “The  SDGs are a huge achievement for humanity that could empower those who have been excluded in the past. But at the same time they also apply to those who live in affluence.” “The strength of the SDGs is that they really cover everything,” said science policy expert E. William Colglazier, former science and technology adviser to the US Secretary of State and IIASA distinguished visiting fellow, at a meeting at IIASA in September. “The weakness is that they are not very useful in terms of focus, with so many different goals.” Now that the SDGs have been adopted, experts agree that a greater challenge lies ahead in implementing them. IIASA  researcher Nils Johnson says, “It’s not simple to try to achieve all of these objectives simultaneously. Trying to achieve one goal might conflict with trying to achieve another. So how do we identify these trade-offs? How do we best manage them?” IIASA has already fed directly into several of the goals, particularly those focused on climate and energy. Researchers at the Institute are now using the goals as a framework to direct integrated analysis across sectors and disciplines. Through several new cross-cutting projects, they are advancing policy-relevant research that can help the international community to successfully implement the goals.  development