To and beyond the 2030 Agenda: systems change for accelerating sustainability progress

by Enayat A. Moallemi, Sibel Eker, Lei Gao, Michalis Hadjikakou, Qi Liu, Jan Kwakkel, Patrick M. Reed, Michael Obersteiner, Zhaoxia Guo, and Brett A. Bryan

This paper is submitted for publication to One Earth.

Abstract

Progress to-date towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has fallen short of expectations and is unlikely to fully meet 2030 targets. We undertake global systems modelling – with a longer-term view than previous assessments – to analyse the key drivers of sustainability progress and how they could change by 2030, 2050, and 2100 under different development pathways. We find that even though some pathways appear to make limited initial progress towards the SDGs by 2030, they can become important in catalysing change later in the century and towards increasingly ambitious targets than those in 2030. To guide how to realise this long-term progress, our results characterise the scale and feasibility of systems change in relation to human well-being and capabilities, sustainable food systems and healthy nutrition, energy transition and universal access, and a broader sustainable economy decoupled from environmental impacts. These findings indicate the importance of adopting longer-term timeframes and pathways to ensure that the necessary pre-conditions are in place for sustainable development well beyond the current 2030 Agenda.

Code implementation and references

All information you need to reproduce the results is saved in the 'Moallemi_et_al_SDG_SSP_Assessment' folder. Within 'Moallemi_et_al_SDG_SSP_Assessment', you find the five following folders:

Model: This includes all the Vensim model file, required input files, and the original model documentation. These model files can be opened with Vensim or can be run through Python when you execute the codes. In both cases, you need to have Vensim DSS installed.
Notebook: This includes all the source codes and their documentation for reproducing the results.
Results: This include all the results that are generated by this research. The results from the exploratory and the sensitivity analyses are separated in two folders: 'Exploration_results' and 'Morris_results'. Due to the large file size, the results files are stored in Zenodo (see README in the Results folder).
Data: Any input data that we used e.g., SSP original data from the IIASA Database (for calibration).
Fig: Any figures generated are stored in this folder.

See the README.md files in each folder for a full description.

Using the code

You can download a copy of all the files in this repository by cloning the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/enayatmoallemi/Moallemi_et_al_SDG_SSP_Assessment.git

or download a zip archive.

A copy of the repository is also archived at Zenodo.

Dependencies

You'll need Vensim DSS 8.0.9 to run the code. If you want to open the model file, then all files in the 'Model' folder must be located in the same directory on your local drive. You'll need Python 3.7.6 to run the code. You can set up an environment with all dependencies using an environment manager like Anaconda Python distribution which provides the conda package manager. Anaconda can be installed in your user directory and does not interfere with the system Python installation. The required dependencies are specified in the file environment.yml. To create an environment from an environment.yml file, use the terminal or an Anaconda Prompt for the following steps:

Create the environment from the environment.yml file:
```
conda env create -f environment.yml
```
Activate the new environment:
```
conda activate myenv
```
Verify that the new environment was installed correctly:
```
conda env list
```

For more information setting the new environment, see: https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html#creating-an-environment-from-an-environment-yml-file

Reproducing the results

Here is a clear step-by-step instructions for replicating Python code.

Activate the conda environment:

activate ./envs

For reproducing the sensitivity/exploratory analysis results in the paper, take the following these steps:

To be able to open the model file in Vensim or to run with the provided code, make sure the model and all associated files (in the 'Model' folder) are in the same folder.
Make sure the notebooks and all associated input spreadsheets and the Model_init file (from the 'Notebook' folder) are in one folder too. Open the Model_init file and correct the model directory line, depending on where you save your model file (from the 'Model' folder)
If you're running the code with parallel processing, make sure you have opened all the three input spreadsheets in the 'Notebook' folder with MS Excel, before running your codes.
The rest of the steps to run the codes are documented in each notebook and also as the README files in each folders.

License

All source code is made available under a BSD 3-clause license. You can freely use and modify the code, without warranty, so long as you provide attribution to the authors.

The authors reserve the rights to the article content, which is currently submitted for publication to One Earth.