Sustainable Development Goals - It is all connected!

SDGs interconnectedness explained

Hi #sustainability champions, we continue our journey through the Agenda 2030 and 17 Sustainable Development Goals to polish our knowledge and upskill in SDG learning. We’ll be posting one SDG goal approximately once or twice weekly until we have gone through all 17 SDGs. Today we explain a bit about a core concept of the SDGs - interconnectedness ✨

You can follow or connect with us and see what we have to offer related to upscaling your change maker abilities (of tools and training) on our new SDG toolkit webpages. ✔

Interconnectedness?   

You may have heard of the so-called butterfly effect, which is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon Forest and causing a typhoon in the Pacific🦋

A metaphor, which reflects our experiences and knowledge that often very minor things can change outcomes significantly (and also supported by the concepts of quantum physics). 

And suffice to say, that all our lives are immersed and part of many complex systems (and systems, within systems, within systems, …) be it our natural world, our social and economic systems, all the way down to our family system and of course even our own body. Most importantly we all know that they are not isolated and independent, but tightly connected and interdependent at every level.

Even though humans often try to divide and separate (and often simplify) many systems into silos (examples are governance structures and institutions) in order to cope with the sheer complexity of issues, but very often losing the connections and interrelations by doing so, leading to limited, unhelpful or even harmful decisions and effects. Obviously, an economic system purely focused on growth and profits, is in a sense systems blind, reductionist and way too simplistic to achieve what it should be intended to achieve, causing many degenerative outcomes in its path, something we all should be well aware of. 

The SDGs are indivisible!  

Because the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs deal with many interrelated issues and problems, they are tightly interconnected and are indivisible and must be approached, reviewed and considered together (as they are a system). This should be obvious as all challenges we face are complex systems and systems models can help us understand intersections between one issue and the others that touch it. This provides insight into the system we are treating. However, systems understanding will also be achieved by considering the links between the SDG.

“The 17 Goals represent an indivisible tapestry of thinking and action that applies in every community, everywhere in the world … They are universal. But they’re also indivisible and that means that we really do not believe that any one goal should be separated out from the others.” David Navarro

We cannot ensure the health and wellbeing (SDG 3) of all the world’s citizens without eliminating poverty (SDG 1) and hunger (SDG 2), for example. We cannot achieve gender equality (SDG 5) without decent work and economic development for all (SDG 8). And we cannot take climate action (SDG 13) without delivering affordable and clean energy (SDG 7). Further, progress cannot be achieved without the supporting frameworks of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) and Partnerships for the SDGs (SDG 17). All are interlinked and interdependent.

As you may begin to develop local solutions addressing one aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals we need to gain a foundational understanding of how one SDG impacts another in a particular place, exemplified as follows:

‘For example, decision makers should pay attention to the subset of Goals that strongly promote other SDGs. As our synthesis shows, progress on education (SDG 4), water and sanitation (SDG 6), and partnerships (SDG 17) have the potential to broadly drive progress on the 2030 Agenda as a whole. These Goals also seem to represent “safe” investments – in general – as progress in these areas does not seem to generate negative impacts or unintended consequences in other areas.

On the other hand, some targets related to food security (SDG 2), decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) seem more likely to involve trade-offs that negatively affect the possibilities of achieving other Goals. This means that these Goals need to be treated with care and that action needs to be taken to mitigate trade-offs where possible. The environmental SDGs (14 on life below water and 15 on life on land) are also associated with trade-offs, but in the sense that they are the Goals that are most negatively affected by actions to promote other SDGs.’ Source]

Working with SDGs as a whole system

Working with the 17 SDGs together and then trying to tackle the interconnections between them, may appear daunting, but there are many tangible tools and approaches to do so, also on a local level, like the use of stakeholder interviews, SDG network mapping, SDG ‘catalyser’ analysis, SDG implementation workshops (some of which are integrated in the Gaia Education SDG tools and approaches through a whole systems perspective integrating social, ecological, economic and worldview/cultural (or living systems) aspects and views on any issue) and many others, which use systems and complexity as a part of and as a positive access point for local community based work for development and attempts to tackle some of the complex and systemic issues plaguing any community anywhere in the world 🌎

In general one can start asking following questions (Source): 

• What is the system in question and how are we defining what belongs to the system and what does not?
• What is the wider context that the system in question operates in?
• What are the key agents whose interactions and relationships define the system structure and drive the system’s behaviour?
• How is our perspective of the system in question shaped by our worldview and value system?
• What are the key ‘emergent properties’ of the system that could not have been predicted by simply looking at the individual ‘parts’ of the system?
• How does our participation in the system and our way of describing it affect what we are observing?

Nevertheless interlinkages of and between the SDGs can also be productively used for developing possible pathways out of ‘the mess we have been riding into’ through scenario analysis of possible future policy directions or projects  and options for resolving the multiple crises in a productive but realistic manner.

As indicated the complex  interconnectedness of the SDGs can appear somewhat challenging to tackle in real world projects and initiatives, but there are also very good and accessible examples of how that may be done based on various examples, like presented on a global stage through initiatives like UN SDG Action Campaign - #Act4SDG or a more easily accessible tool like Mapting, but also more local and regional initiatives highlighting SDG implementation projects. Worth searching in your region for such examples.

A checklist for delivering the SDGs, which gives a good insight into the interconnected nature of all SDGs, but also some interesting examples of real world implementation projects is provided here. 

With respect to other Gaia Education offerings and work about interconnectedness and systems, most courses offer aspects such as our courses and offerings are based on our 4D Design framework holistically and systematically integrating the dimensions of social, ecological, economic as well as worldview/cultural perspectives woven into a whole system design framework, integrated in all our courses for example our online flagship course Design for Sustainability and Regeneration. Specifically our online course on Systems Thinking for Real-World Changes, where you can learn simple frameworks for contextualising  systems methods and models, and for looking at your own work and where to go next for continued, in-depth systems training.

Let’s take our future into our own hands, and start your SDG journey now!

If you would like to learn much more about SDG interconnectedness and many more topics approaches and methods to practically work with the SDG in your local context we encourage you to start or re-invigorate your personal SDG journey through the upcoming online SDGs Multipliers course, starting on 17th February 2025.

Join here!