Abstract for: Pathways towards climate targets – What synergies arise in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Although the urgency to take effective action to curb climate change is increasing, most countries’ efforts are not sufficient to achieve the required emission reductions for limiting global warming to 2°C. While scenarios for climate mitigation show how current policies will achieve progress on long term emission reduction goals, more holistic approaches for pathways towards sustainable development, as for example the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that also consider interaction effects among social and environmental indicators are lacking. However, understanding the broader implications of energy and climate policies and measures is key, when defining holistic sustainable development pathways. For the case of Austria, this paper analyzes the impacts of a scenario of climate mitigation policies, that are already implemented or have been decided on (“with existing measures” scenario, WEM), on the SDGs. Therefore, the quantitative system dynamics based iSDG model for Austria is applied to take account of the interaction effects of climate and energy policy and the SDGs as well as the long-term time horizon of a sustainable transition. The results will show whether the policies have synergy effects with other dimensions of sustainable development or unintended conflicts might arise.