Sustainability goals combining social and environmental aspects

Sammanfattning: Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and other environmental issues such as loss of biodiversity, land system change and eutrophication of freshwater and marine coastal ecosystems are major challenges to humanity. For these planetary boundaries, we have already exceeded critical levels, which may threaten Earth System stability. Nationally, out of the 16 Swedish environmental goals for 2020, only one – the goal concerning the ozone layer – is expected to be reached. Furthermore, although the UN Millennium Development Goals have shown substantial progress in some areas, e.g. gender equality in education, many disparities between and within regions remain, e.g. with respect to socio-economic or gender aspects.This thesis examines how to take into account both environmental and social sustainability goals to be used in scenarios or in policymaking.In paper I, we use a literature review and interviews to gather background information on 11 social priorities and 9 planetary boundaries and then select, in a transdisciplinary setting, four sustainability goals. These goals have to be fulfilled by 2050 in normative future scenarios - backcasting - for Sweden in a degrowth or low-growth context. Two goals address ecological challenges, climate change and land use issues specifically. The other two goals address social issues and deal with participation and influence in society as well as resource security and distribution. The environmental goals will require significant reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use compared to today's levels. The social goals are within reach today, although the degree of fulfillment differs across different groups in society.In paper II, a qualitative content analysis is made to gather information from scientific literature and reports from environmental NGOs on existing as well as suggested climate and energy targets at a global, national and local scale. We also search for justice perspectives in existing climate and energy targets and for proposals for such perspectives in suggested targets. We find that the justice aspect is not explicitly formulated in existing climate and energy targets. Using a framework on social justice that distinguishes between the community of justice, the principles of distribution and the currency of justice, we also find that for most suggested targets, an egalitarian approach is used, such as global per capita GHG emission allowances. The community of justice, in our reviewed examples, is limited to human beings, thereby excluding all other living beings.In paper III, we assess how four different backcasting scenarios for land use in a Swedish context, all of which fulfill a climate target of zero CO2 emissions in 2060, impact on other sustainability goals. Using a compatibility matrix, we conduct a goal conflict analysis between the chosen climate goal and the other Swedish environmental goals, the gender equity goals and the public health goal with its 11 associated objective domains. We find that there are more potential goal conflicts in scenarios with no global climate agreement. This is mainly due to the fact that some environmental issues have to be dealt with at a global level and that the mitigation of the environmental impacts will depend on actions taken not only in Sweden but also on a global scale.From the results of all three papers, I then discuss several aspects that have to be taken into account when setting goals. As sustainability goals are long-term and characterized by major uncertainties, I discuss the need to set "cautiously utopian goals", i.e. goals that may be impossible to achieve but possible to approach. These goals could trigger the profound changes needed for a sustainable and just future while remaining acceptable for the involved stakeholders. Goals are however often elusive as to what is included or not, e.g. whether emissions from trade are included in climate targets or from which reference year a specific emission reduction should be based upon. These delimitations should be made visible at the least but ideally reflected upon as to how they may impact for instance other countries' emission reductions.iThere is also a need to separate goals from the means to achieve the goals, as this will facilitate the process of setting goals than can allow for different pathways on how to meet a certain goal. Economic growth is often seen as a goal in itself, such as in the recently adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, whereas it should be regarded as a mere tool to achieve goals relating to, e.g., welfare or prosperity.Goals are also normative and reflect both different cultural and ethical perspectives of what a good level of healthcare or housing standard may be. The underlying values should also be made visible and challenged. Both inter- and intragenerational justice perspectives should be made more concrete and explicit in goal setting so that such issues can also be monitored. A good start could be to systematically start using a consumption perspective as well as a territorial perspective when setting climate or land use goals, as the impact of our consumption on other countries' environment and health has been increasing over the last decades.