Knowledge co-production reveals nuanced societal dynamics and sectoral connections in mapping sustainable human-natural systems

Abstract

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) encompass environmental, social, and economic dimensions which are linked to the characteristics of place and have a strong local dimension. They are interconnected at local scales in complex ways which makes progress difficult to predict. To understand how these interconnections play out at the local scale, we co-designed a systems model of the SDGs with a local community using a specific case study in Australia. In this paper, this multi-component model is fully documented, tested for uncertainty, and we have described a Business-As-Usual projection to illustrate its use. We found that integrating insights from local communities in a model co-design process can elicit far more societal interconnections between the SDGs compared to the current dominant model-building paradigm which typically does not involve meaningful stakeholder involvement. Social issues are often intensely local in origin and effect and attempts to model them at national or global scales may not succeed. Via local scale model co-design, we can tease out the interconnections between societal and non-societal issues and have a greater chance of identifying effective solutions to broader sustainability problems. Our results demonstrate that modelers alone are not fully aware of contextual differences and locally specific interactions that drive the behavior of systems and SDG progress. Stakeholder participation at the local scale is critical for human-focused modelling that better appreciates local nuances. The local SDGs systems model fills a research gap between global, multisectoral, integrated models, and single-sector models applied to local case studies.

Eight Archetypes of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Synergies and Trade‐Offs

“…Understanding SDG interactions as archetypes and linking them to their underlying causal drivers and potential dynamic behavior can help structure available knowledge in the form of conceptual models, that is, a rich picture of drivers, delays, and feedbacks, which is a key step in the modeling process for sustainability (Szetey et al., 2022). The key to the use of archetypes for developing these conceptual models is the use of causal loop diagrams to map the coevolving nature of socio‐economic and environmental processes.…”

“…Feedback loops which influence dynamic behavior are marked with positive or negative identifiers, indicating either a reinforcing (e.g., a positive change in one system element leads to a positive change in another, potentially with exponential behavior) or balancing (e.g., a negative change in one system element leads to a negative change in another) relationship over time, respectively. Unlike the archetypes, the causal loop diagrams have been used for mapping SDG interactions (Cernev & Fenner, 2020; Macmillan et al., 2020; Szetey et al., 2022).…”

Knowledge co-production for decision-making in human-natural systems under uncertainty

“…proposing detailed action plans (85,86)). The cases also bring a more explicit understanding of power relationships among actors (e.g., discussing corrective/empowering interventions for power imbalances (81,83)) and how they might be governed (e.g., influencing powerful actors (80,87), empowering marginalised groups (88,89)). However, while Collaboration cases co-produce knowledge to inform policy for change (e.g., advising governments on plans (90)), often they do not discuss how to co-manage transformation on the ground with societal actors (Figure 3c).…”