Background
Despite only 10 years remaining to achieve the 2030 Agenda, no country is on track to meet all 17 SDGs. Taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, through SDG 13 “Climate action” and in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, remains the single biggest challenge to pursuing development. Importantly, growing evidence demonstrates that climate action necessitates a transition addressing all dimensions of sustainability. The need to address distributional impacts and inequality emerges as a critical requirement for climate action and vice versa.
Our research thus far has confirmed that distributional consequences of both climate action and climate change clearly point to the potential goal conflicts and/or untapped synergies between climate action and reducing inequalities. Thus far, connections made at a rhetorical level have not translated into strategies and practices of strong policy coherence between climate change and sustainable development.
Aims and objectives
The overarching aim of this programme is to analyse conditions for coherence between climate change, reducing inequality and other SDGs when implemented nationally and to provide tools to identify synergies and make transparent trade-offs in different socio-economic and political contexts. This programme includes a comparative study of nine country cases: Australia, Fiji, Colombia, Sweden, Germany, Kenya, Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the national-level research is complemented with global and regional (the European Union) cross-country quantitative analysis, as well as analysis at the sub-national level. We also aim to develop a novel policy coherence visualisation tool to aid decision-makers implementing the Paris Agreement and the 17 SDGs.
The programme seeks to enhance effectiveness of policy coherence efforts, both nationally and globally, for successful implementation of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda. Overall, we intend to make policy recommendations both on novel and coherent policy packages and on process design to enable cross-country policy learning to avoid increasing inequality as an outcome of incoherence.
Partners
In addition to core partners, local partners from the case study countries are also involved in co-leading the national case study work. These include:
- University of Canberra
- University of Fiji
- WWF South Africa
- Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA)
- University of the Philippines
Funder
SEI team
- Research Fellow
- SEI Headquarters
- @Adis_Dzebo
- Research Director and Deputy Director
- SEI Headquarters
- @Perssonasa
- Senior Research Fellow
- SEI Headquarters
- Senior Expert Researcher
- SEI Latin America
- @ILobosAlva
- Centre Director
- SEI Africa
- @PMOsano
- Research Fellow
- SEI Africa
- @cassildemuhoza
Core partners team
- Björn-Ola Linnér (LiU)
- Sara Gottenhuber (LiU)
- Sander Chan (Global Center on Adaptation)
- Ines Dombrowsky (DIE)
- Gabriela Iacobuta (DIE)
- Marjanneke Vijge (UU)
Local partners team
- Jonathan Pickering (University of Canberra)
- Priyatama Singh (University of Fiji)
- Karin Fernando (CEPA)
- Saliem Fakir (WWF)
- Cecilia Therese T. Guiao (University of Philippines)
The disconnect between global climate and sustainable development agendas is often reflected in policy incoherence at the national level fostering inequality.
- Perspective
- Climate
- Governance
- 2 December 2019
- Kenya
- Philippines
- Sri Lanka
- Germany
- South Africa
- Sweden
- Press release
- 29 January 2018
- Political drivers of policy coherence for sustainable development: an analytical framework
- Increasing policy coherence between NDCs and SDGs: a national perspective
- The 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement: Voluntary contributions towards thematic policy coherence
- The Sustainable Development Goals viewed through a climate lens
- Connections between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda: the case for policy coherence
- Pathways for policy coherence in implementation of NDC and SDGs in Viet Nam and the role of civil society
- Exploring connections between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
This event highlighted how policy incoherence between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda at the national level exacerbates inequalities.
- Event
- Climate
- Governance
- 9 July 2020
SEI is set to present tools for easily making connections between climate action and other SDGs, enabling coherent policy-making towards both goals.
- Event
- Governance
- Climate
- 1 - 3 April 2019
- 09:00 - 12:00
- Copenhagen, Denmark
Analyze and compare how climate actions correspond to the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Tool
- Governance
- 7 November 2017