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    Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Are we successful in turning trade-offs into synergies?
    (Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) Kroll, Christian; Warchold, Anne; Pradhan, Prajal
    The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides the framework that all United Nations (UN) member states have pledged to fulfill. The achievement of this agenda crucially depends on whether humankind will be able to maximize synergies and resolve existing trade-offs between the SDGs. We provide the first analysis of future interactions for projected SDG trends until 2030 within and between goals, and we analyze how trade-offs and synergies have evolved in the recent past globally. For certain goals, we find positive developments with notable synergies in our projections, especially for SDGs 1, 3, 7, 8, and 9: Poverty alleviation and strengthening the economy, rooted in innovation, and modern infrastructure, therefore continue to be the basis upon which many of the other SDGs can be achieved. However, especially SDGs 11, 13, 14, 16, and 17 will continue to have notable trade-offs, as well as non-associations with the other goals in the future, which emphasizes the need to foster innovations and policies that can make our cities and communities more sustainable, as well as strengthen institutions and spur climate action. We show examples of a successful transformation of trade-offs into synergies that should be emulated in other areas to create a virtuous cycle of SDG progress. The alarming inability to overcome certain persistent trade-offs we have found, and indeed the deterioration for some SDGs, can seriously threaten the achievement of the Agenda 2030.
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    Scientific assessments to facilitate deliberative policy learning
    (Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Kowarsch, Martin; Garard, Jennifer; Riousset, Pauline; Lenzi, Dominic; Dorsch, Marcel J.; Knopf, Brigitte; Harrs, Jan-Albrecht; Edenhofer, Ottmar
    Putting the recently adopted global Sustainable Development Goals or the Paris Agreement on international climate policy into action will require careful policy choices. Appropriately informing decision-makers about longer-term, wicked policy issues remains a considerable challenge for the scientific community. Typically, these vital policy issues are highly uncertain, value-laden and disputed, and affect multiple temporal and spatial scales, governance levels, policy fields, and socioeconomic contexts simultaneously. In light of this, science-policy interfaces should help facilitate learning processes and open deliberation among all actors involved about potentially acceptable policy pathways. For this purpose, science-policy interfaces must strive to foster some enabling conditions: (1) “representation” in terms of engaging with diverse stakeholders (including experts) and acknowledging divergent viewpoints; (2) “empowerment” of underrepresented societal groups by co-developing and integrating policy scenarios that reflect their specific knowledge systems and worldviews; (3) “capacity building” regarding methods and skills for integration and synthesis, as well as through the provision of knowledge synthesis about the policy solution space; and (4) “spaces for deliberation”, facilitating direct interaction between different stakeholders, including governments and scientists. We argue that integrated, multi-stakeholder, scientific assessment processes—particularly the collaborative assessments of policy alternatives and their various implications—offer potential advantages in this regard, compared with alternatives for bridging scientific expertise and public policy. This article is part of a collection on scientific advice to governments.