In an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scholars from the Millennium Institute argue that enhanced understanding of synergies in sustainable development planning can support accelerated progress on the SDGs and produce significant cost savings. Pilot studies in three countries – Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi and Senegal – were used to test this typology.

The article titled, ‘Harvesting synergy from sustainable development goal interactions,’ calls for a deeper understanding of the cross-sectoral impacts and synergies among policies to meet the SDGs. The authors present a system dynamics-based model that they call “an integrated SDG (iSDG) model” for national-scale planning. The iSDG model enables simulation of “what-if” scenarios, assessing multiple policies in aggregate or individually to anticipate the effects of SDG policies across sectors.

In the pilots, the authors used the iSDG model to test the performance of 80 targets under both a business-as-usual scenario reflecting current budget allocations and policies, and an SDG policy scenario of “ambitious interventions” to achieve the SDGs. Under the business-as-usual scenario, countries would have “very low levels of achievement by 2030.” Côte d’Ivoire, for instance, achieved a simulated level of achievement of 21% by 2030.

The authors found synergy contributions to overall SDG performance were highest in Côte d’Ivoire, at 7%, with synergy observed for nine of the 17 SDGs; followed by 2% for Senegal, which exhibited synergy for six of the SDGs; and 0.7% for Malawi, which showed synergy for three of the SDGs. The authors estimate these contributions represent a gross domestic product (GDP) benefit of 3% for Côte d’Ivoire, 0.7% for Senegal and 0.4% for Malawi. They conclude that effectively harvesting such synergies could free up resources for further SDG investment.

The authors also observed SDG “dissynergy” in the three countries, suggesting a “simulated drag on performance” of 10% for Côte d’Ivoire’s overall SDG performance. Dissynergy resulted in an 8% drag in performance in the Malawi model, and 4% in the Senegal model. The authors note that some dissynergies suggest areas where resources could be “more productively allocated to other sector policies.”

The authors highlight the applicability of these findings beyond their three pilot countries. [Publication: Harvesting synergy from sustainable development goal interactions] [Millennium Institute Website]