The SDGs and the Systems Approach to Sustainability

This chapter relates the current SDGs to their forerunner, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the systems approach to sustainability. We illustrate how each of the 17 SDGs can be characterized as a goal primarily attributed to the environmental, economic, or social system, as suggested by the basic principles of sustainability science. The systems approach is often captured in a Venn diagram, which depicts sustainable development as the intersection of the goals attributed to these three interlinked systems. One important insight is that attempting to maximize the goals for just one system may not achieve sustainability, because the impacts on the other systems are ignored. Analyzing such interactions is the foundation of our economic approach to assessing progress towards the SDGs.