Strategies to reach global sustainability should take better account of ecosystem services

• Published in: Ecosystem services Vol. 49; p. 101292
• Main Authors: Pires, Aliny P.F., Rodriguez Soto, Clarita, Scarano, Fabio R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-06-2021
• Subjects: 2030 Agenda; Cooperation; Low-income countries; Sustainable Development Goals; Synergies; Trade-offs; 2030 Agenda; Low-income countries; Sustainable Development Goals; Cooperation; Trade-offs; Synergies
• ISSN: 2212-0416; 2212-0416
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2021.101292

•We designed a new framework to classify countries according to their trajectory concerning the 2030 Agenda.•There are abysmal differences in the sustainability performance among countries.•There are critical trade-offs between goals, and SDG 12 presents the most trade-offs.•Current efforts are conducting trajectories of local sustainability rather than towards global sustainability.•The existing trade-offs between socioeconomic and ‘green’ SDGs suggest that ES are not incorporated into sustainability policies.
Strategies for establishing priorities for the sustainability agenda by addressing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are prominent in the scientific literature. Some studies have suggested that sustainability will emerge from different backgrounds, such as through biosphere or societal transformations, whereas other approaches have searched for potential synergies and trade-offs between SDGs. Here, we analysed the main SDG database to investigate the caveats and cooperation opportunities to turn initiatives from local to global sustainability. We established an innovative conceptual framework to set up different sustainability trends for all SDGs and classified countries accordingly. We revealed that despite the significant advance in the last years, the sustainability agenda is still based on national rather than global performance. Consequently, the current efforts are promoting local sustainability trends with great spillover among countries. ‘Green’ SDGs 14 and 15 often had trade-offs or are uncoupled of social and economic SDGs. It suggests that the role ecosystem services play in connecting biodiversity and human wellbeing is not well incorporated into policies and practices. We argue that the world's shift towards global sustainability will depend strongly on cooperation among countries, strengthen existing synergies between SDGs and reduce negative externalities to other specific agendas.