As a global society, we have historically pursued large, collective goals—to end hunger, to stop war, to halt climate change. The United Nations (UN) has played a major role in global goal setting, beginning with the Millennium Development Goals and then with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These efforts are laudable and necessary, but as the world works to achieve multiple major milestones, we must consider whether the pursuit of all of them simultaneously in every country, engenders collective progress or hampers advancement on each of them individually. This question is particularly pertinent as the United Nations initiates the process of global goal setting beyond the current SDG time horizon of 2030. Are there lessons from the SDG process that can help in the design and implementation of future global goals? 

As societal goals, the SDGs tackle issues of immense complexity and have proven difficult to achieve. There are 17 SDGs, with a total of 169 specific targets. Each are praiseworthy, but they are positioned as holding equal weight and equal priority. Every country is expected to address all the SDG goals together, no matter their level of economic development, national priorities and context. It is worth considering, then, how the pursuit of each goal and its targets affects others positively or negatively. What are the synergies and what are the tradeoffs? How do we maximize the former while minimizing the latter? Let’s consider the complexity of jointly pursuing just two SDGs—hunger and climate change.

Ending hunger while combating climate change—SDG 2 and SDG 13

SDG 2 aims to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.” Consider how the pursuit of zero hunger could interact with SDG 13—“take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.” It is immediately clear how these two goals might conflict with one another. Increasing agricultural productivity in pursuit of food security could negatively affect land and water resources, reduce genetic diversity, and enhance greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigating climate change impacts requires the transformation of the agricultural production systems to reduce GHG emissions and to sequester carbon, which could impact overall productivity and food security.

South Asia provides a good example of the tradeoffs between food security and climate action and environmental sustainability. The region has made great progress reducing hunger since the Green Revolution, but at the price of groundwater depletion, soil degradation, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. In a 2022 paper published in Environmental Challenges, my colleague Milorad Plavsic and I mapped out the relationship between SDG target 2.3—doubling farmer productivity and incomes—and the other SDGs in South Asia. We found a complex web of interactions, showing that boosting farm productivity supports some SDGs and undermines others. For example, while SDG 2.3 has a negative impact on SDG 6, which intends to ensure clean water and sanitation for all, it has a positive effect on SDG 1’s aim to end poverty.

Even within SDG 2, different targets affect each other. For instance, increasing productivity in an agricultural system that focuses on staple grains (like India’s) can make nutrient-rich foods more expensive and less accessible, hampering efforts to reduce malnutrition, as stipulated by SDG 2.2. Moreover, the focus on staple grains could also slow the transition to diversified cropping systems that are climate-friendly and have lower GHG emissions.

Mitigating trade-offs and exploiting synergies

How do we mitigate the tradeoffs between SDGs and take advantage of synergies? The challenges to doing so are significant. It requires managing intersectoral conflicts, alignment of competing stakeholder interests, and convergence of global goals and national priorities.

Within a country, conflicts between sectoral ministries happen due to misaligned incentives. Take the case of the competing interests of the Agriculture and the Environment Ministries. The Agriculture Ministry is primarily focused on increasing and sustaining production to keep food prices low and to ensure adequate supplies for government food safety net programs, such as the Public Distribution System in India. The Environment Ministry, on the other hand, is mostly interested in protecting the environment, conserving biodiversity and climate action.  Opportunities exist for reducing the productivity-environment tradeoffs by focusing on promoting sustainable intensification, making the food system more climate-resilient, and mitigating agriculture’s contribution to climate change. However, the incentives and political imperatives are often not aligned.

The influence of global donors over national research and policy agendas is also a challenge. Donor priorities, be they bilateral, multilateral or philanthropic, often differ from those of national policymakers, and they change frequently. In recent decades, donor focus has shifted from favoring research on agricultural productivity and food security to sustainability, climate change and healthy food systems. Moreover, global donors prioritize a chosen approach, usually one that is currently in vogue, such as regenerative agriculture, with little consideration for the local context. Researchers align their work to donor priorities, widening the gap between their research outputs and policymakers’ needs.

Despite these challenges, there are significant synergies between the SDGs that focus on hunger, environmental sustainability and climate action. To fully exploit the synergies, we must have a clear understanding of conflicting goals and interests and the opportunities for collaboration between different sectors and stakeholders.

Another major challenge is the role of political economy in impeding policy change. Attempts to shift production systems towards sustainability invariably involve the reduction or repurposing of farm subsidies. In heavily subsidized, input-intensive food systems, such changes often provoke opposition from farmers. In recent years, we have seen immense farmer protests in countries that have attempted to reduce subsidies, such as India and France. Diversifying agricultural systems away from staple grains can minimize many of the tradeoffs between production and sustainability, but we need to find a way to make the politics work.

Despite these challenges, there are significant synergies between the SDGs that focus on hunger, environmental sustainability and climate action. To fully exploit the synergies, we must have a clear understanding of conflicting goals and interests and the opportunities for collaboration between different sectors and stakeholders. One way to improve our understanding is by employing “true cost accounting.” True cost accounting measures the costs and societal impacts of a policy or program. It can be used to uncover environmental, health and other impacts associated with food systems and assign them monetary values, giving a fuller picture of the costs of food production. This practice not only helps to identify tradeoffs, but also synergies between competing goals.

Many synergistic opportunities are available to us now in the form of different technologies. In rice production systems, for example, more efficient water and land management can increase productivity and reduce emissions. The same can be said for methane-reducing feed supplements in the livestock sector, or the use of solar power for irrigation and post-production operations. However, the incentives for inducing change at the farm level are often lacking.

Looking beyond 2030

As we approach 2030 and start thinking about what’s next for the global development agenda, we need to assess the lessons learned from the SDG process. Understanding how the tradeoffs and synergies among the SDGs were handled, and how we could have done better, would be an important part of the learning process.

Conflicts and tradeoffs between SDG goals could have been reduced if we had better data, knowledge, and awareness. A good place for the research community to start is the development of metrics and the collection of high-quality data, at the national and sub-national levels, to provide a clearer picture of the interactions between the SDGs and their targets. Investments in better data systems for developing countries is an absolute necessity for accurately tracking progress towards SDG goals, and to understanding the impediments to progress and identifying synergies for success.

Convergence across societal goals (hunger, health, environment, and climate) must be underpinned by inter-sectoral policy convergence and coordination across sector-specific agencies. Inter-sectoral coordination is important for agencies at all levels – global multinational institutions to national and state-level ministries.

A one-size-fits-all approach to SDG implementation does not work. What’s applicable to food systems in Botswana is not the same as in Bangladesh.

There is a diversity of options for reducing the tradeoffs between SDGs and enhancing synergies; however, these solutions need to be targeted to specific food systems contexts and to the country’s level of economic development. A one-size-fits-all approach to SDG implementation does not work. What’s applicable to food systems in Botswana is not the same as in Bangladesh.

Even where solutions are well known and applicable, political economy concerns impede their implementation. The development community has often touted ways, such as “repurposing subsidies,” for getting around these concerns. However, such policy reforms have been limited, and the status quo remains.

Finally, successful attainment of societal goals requires buy-in at all levels, from officials in global institutions to national leaders and to local government functionaries. The SDG process was relatively successful in involving national governments in the rollout and implementation process, but I suspect involvement at the local government and community level was limited. Local governments and community organizations are the ultimate bridge to successful SDG implementation.  They are best able to identify tradeoffs and synergies across SDGs at the local level and identify appropriate solutions. Future design and implementation of societal goals ought to involve the participation and buy-in of local government and community leaders.

Prabhu Pingali is the founding director of TCI.

Featured image: Interventions to increase agricultural productivity can have environmental tradeoffs. For example, increased irrigation can deplete groundwater levels. (Photo by Kiera Crowley/TCI)