If you are familiar with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), you know they’re numbered 1 through 17. It’s tempting to think of numbered goals needing to be completed in order, but the SDG’s are much more complex than that. We must see them as connected challenges needing to be solved in concert.
In fact, the SDGs are much more complex than a numbered order, but that’s the good news in my opinion. Once we start seeing the SDGs as connected challenges needing to be solved in concert, we can make the social and environmental progress that the planet needs.
The recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report scared a lot of people. Suddenly, SDG 13 — Climate Action seemed like the highest priority. To make this action happen, our policy choices surrounding climate change were quite simple; to avoid worse impacts from climate change, we needed to set lower global targets for greenhouse gas emissions. The lower the targets, the better. Things couldn’t be simpler, right?
The problem is that this brand of policy advice may be too simple, as the perspective speaks to only one element of the complex and dynamic system of human-environment interactions.
Climate catastrophe triggers the imagination. We picture a future of dodging tornados, paddling flooded streets, and fleeing raging fires. These are threats, and as we’ve seen recently, very real ones, but climate catastrophe is just as much a socio-economic threat as a physical one.
Collapsing economies, failing political systems, ailing health care infrastructure and fractured communities are all part of the climate peril we face.
For example, we are seeing a trend of populist and isolationist governments pulling out of climate agreements. These governments often spring up in countries with large wealth inequality (SDG 10). As a result, any national climate solution that breeds more inequality may have a negative political impact for that country's participation in multinational climate agreements.
Population growth is another factor warming the planet. It is proven that in countries where gender equality is more pronounced, there is less population growth. But attaining gender equality often requires good governance (SDG 16).
These scenarios might make the climate challenge seem even more daunting. But they actually give me some sense of optimism. Most of us are not climate scientists, but each of us can reduce inequality, fight poverty, reduce hunger and work towards gender equality. In doing so, we are fighting climate catastrophe, even without SDG 13 specifically in mind.
