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Non-Technical Summary In 2015, the United Nations articulated the ambition to move toward a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all by adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, little is known about the pathways that could lead to their concurrent achievement. We provide an overview of the current literature on quantitative pathways toward the SDGs, indicate the commonly used methods and indicators, and identify the most comprehensive pathways that have been published to date. Our results indicate that there is a need for more scenarios toward the full set of SDGs, using a wider range of underlying narratives. Technical Summary Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could help to explore the needed systems' transformations to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by identifying enabling conditions and accounting for the synergies and trade-offs between the SDGs. Given that the SDGs were adopted some time ago, here, we review the existing global scenario literature to determine what it can offer in this context. We found only a few scenarios that address a large set of SDGs, while many more deal with specific clusters of 2–6 SDGs. We identified the most frequent clusters and compared the results of the most comprehensive sustainable development scenarios. The latter is complicated because of the diversity of methods, indicators, and assumptions used. Therefore, we suggest that an effort is needed to develop a wider set of scenarios that would achieve multiple SDGs, using a more standardized framework of targets and indicators. Social Media Summary This study reviews the current global pathways toward the SDGs and shows the need for a broader set of SDG scenarios.

Positive tipping points are promising leverage points in social systems for accelerated progress towards climate and sustainability targets. Besides their impact in specific social systems such as energy, food, or social norms and values, positive tipping dynamics may in some cases spread across different systems, amplifying the impact of tipping interventions. However, the cross-system interactions that can create such tipping cascades are sparsely examined. Here, we review interactions across sociotechnical, socioecological, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical systems that can lead to tipping cascades based on the emerging and relevant past evidence. We show that there are several feedback mechanisms where a strategic input can trigger secondary impacts for a disproportionately large positive response, and various agents that can trigger such cascades. This review of cross-system interactions facilitates the quantification and analysis of positive tipping cascades in future studies.

Social tipping points are promising levers for accelerating decarbonization progress. They describe how social, political, economic, or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if positive feedback mechanisms are triggered. Analyzing the potential for social tipping requires the inherent complexity of social systems to be considered. Yet the growing social tipping literature is missing a practical framework that embeds conceptual and empirical aspects of complex feedback processes. In this perspective, we propose a dynamic systems approach that can contextualize conceptual social tipping mechanisms into practical interventions, and map the key feedback mechanisms underlying tipping dynamics across systems and scales. Our approach has three main components: a systems outlook involving interconnected feedback mechanisms; directed data collection for empirical evidence and monitoring tipping dynamics; and global, integrated, descriptive modeling to project future dynamics and provide ex ante evidence for tipping interventions. We demonstrate how and why this approach should shape a broad agenda to strengthen the viability and effectiveness of social tipping research.

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being.

The authors are all devoted energy system and sustainability transformation scholars, who collaborate regularly and actively at global and local levels to advance the knowledge space of demand-side solutions and policies. They are members of a growing bottom-up initiative, the Energy Demand Changes Induced by Technological and Social Innovations (EDITS) network (https://iiasa.ac.at/projects/edits), which builds on various research disciplines to facilitate advances in modeling, data compilation, and analysis of the scope and breadth of the potential contributions of demand-side solutions for climate change mitigation, improved wellbeing for all, and sustainability, complementing supply-side solutions for decarbonizing the energy and material systems.

Operating within safe and just Earth system boundaries requires mobilizing key actors across scale to set targets and take actions accordingly. Robust, transparent and fair cross-scale translation methods are essential to help navigate through the multiple steps of scientific and normative judgements in translation, with clear awareness of associated assumptions, bias and uncertainties. Here, through literature review and expert elicitation, we identify commonly used sharing approaches, illustrate ten principles of translation and present a protocol involving key building blocks and control steps in translation. We pay particular attention to businesses and cities, two understudied but critical actors to bring on board.

Energy security is a top priority for governments, companies, and households because energy systems and the critical functions that they support are threatened by disruptions from wars, pandemics, climate change, and other shocks (1). More often than not, governments rely on policies focused on energy supply to enhance energy security while generally ignoring demand-side possibilities. Further, the indicators traditionally used to measure energy security are also tilted toward the supply side; this fails to capture the full spectrum of vulnerability to energy crises. Energy security assessments need to reflect the wider benefits of security-related interventions more accurately. To that end, we develop a systematic approach to measuring the energy security impacts of policy interventions that explicitly considers energy demand (buildings, transport, and industry). We determine that demand-side actions outperform conventional supply-side approaches at making countries more resilient.

Safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for surface water and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. Here we assessed whether minimum human needs could be met with surface water from within individual river basins alone and, where this is not possible, quantified how much groundwater would be required. Approximately 2.6 billion people live in river basins where groundwater is needed because they are already outside the surface water ESB or have insufficient surface water to meet human needs and the ESB. Approximately 1.4 billion people live in river basins where demand-side transformations would be required as they either exceed the surface water ESB or face a decline in groundwater recharge and cannot meet minimum needs within the ESB. A further 1.5 billion people live in river basins outside the ESB, with insufficient surface water to meet minimum needs, requiring both supply- and demand-side transformations. These results highlight the challenges and opportunities of meeting even basic human access needs to water and protecting aquatic ecosystems.

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), in collaboration with its Japan National Member Organization (NMO), supported by Ministry of the Environment Japan (MOEJ) has initiated a joint research endeavor centered on Cities Transformation. The primary aim of this collaborative effort's inaugural phase is the compilation of a fast-track comprehensive report. This report aims to consolidate the current understanding of urban transformations, identifying critical knowledge gaps therein. It serves to support the scientific community, city stakeholders, and policy-makers in discerning areas warranting greater attention and, crucially, further investigation and study. Particularly, it provides updates on the IPCC 7th Assessment Cycle, with a specific focus on its Special Report on Climate Change and Cities. Commencing with an overview of global urbanization trends, the report delves into the status of informal urban settlement development (Section 2). Subsequently, it comprehensively discusses the physical aspects of climate change, including impacts, vulnerability, adaptation, and mitigation, with a spotlight on air pollution and waste challenges (Section 3). Section 4 shifts focus to systems transformation, examining sectors and cross-cutting perspectives through various case studies. Following this, Section 5 investigates the enabling conditions for city transformations, emphasizing the roles of governance, behavioral and lifestyle changes, innovation and technology, and finance. Expanding further, Section 6 assesses the synergies and trade-offs of mitigation and adaptation strategies, with a particular lens on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), health, and well-being. The report concludes by recognizing significant knowledge gaps highlighted through expert insights.

Social tipping points are promising levers for accelerating progress towards net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets. They describe how social, political, economic or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if cascading positive feedback mechanisms are triggered. Analysing the potential for social tipping requires considering the inherent complexity of social systems and their feedbacks. Here, drawing on insights from an expert elicitation workshop, we outline a dynamic systems approach that entails i) a systems outlook involving interconnected feedback mechanisms alongside cross-system and cross-scale interactions, ii) directed data collection efforts to provide empirical evidence and monitoring of social tipping dynamics, and iii) global, integrated, descriptive modelling to project future dynamics and provide ex-ante evidence for interventions aiming to trigger positive feedback mechanisms. We argue how and why this approach will strengthen the climate policy relevance of research on social tipping.

10 november 2022, Contains fulltext : 286352.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)

The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. Here we express them in terms of numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche. By end-of-century (2080–2100), current policies leading to around 2.7 °C global warming could leave one-third (22–39%) of people outside the niche. Reducing global warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C results in a ~5-fold decrease in the population exposed to unprecedented heat (mean annual temperature ≥29 °C). The lifetime emissions of ~3.5 global average citizens today (or ~1.2 average US citizens) expose one future person to unprecedented heat by end-of-century. That person comes from a place where emissions today are around half of the global average. These results highlight the need for more decisive policy action to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.

Safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for surface water and groundwater (blue water) have been defined for sustainable water management in the Anthropocene. Here we assessed whether minimum human needs could be met with surface water from within individual river basins alone and, where this is not possible, quantified how much groundwater would be required. Approximately 2.6 billion people live in river basins where groundwater is needed because they are already outside the surface water ESB or have insufficient surface water to meet human needs and the ESB. Approximately 1.4 billion people live in river basins where demand-side transformations would be required as they either exceed the surface water ESB or face a decline in groundwater recharge and cannot meet minimum needs within the ESB. A further 1.5 billion people live in river basins outside the ESB, with insufficient surface water to meet minimum needs, requiring both supply- and demand-side transformations. These results highlight the challenges and opportunities of meeting even basic human access needs to water and protecting aquatic ecosystems.

Many scenarios for limiting global warming to 1.5°C assume planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal sufficient to exceed anthropogenic emissions, resulting in radiative forcing falling and temperatures stabilizing. However, such removal technology may prove unfeasible for technical, environmental, political, or economic reasons, resulting in continuing greenhouse gas emissions from hard-to-mitigate sectors. This may lead to constant concentration scenarios, where net anthropogenic emissions remain non-zero but small, and are roughly balanced by natural carbon sinks. Such a situation would keep atmospheric radiative forcing roughly constant. Fixed radiative forcing creates an equilibrium “committed” warming, captured in the concept of “equilibrium climate sensitivity.” This scenario is rarely analyzed as a potential extension to transient climate scenarios. Here, we aim to understand the planetary response to such fixed concentration commitments, with an emphasis on assessing the resulting likelihood of exceeding temperature thresholds that trigger climate tipping points. We explore transients followed by respective equilibrium committed warming initiated under low to high emission scenarios. We find that the likelihood of crossing the 1.5°C threshold and the 2.0°C threshold is 83% and 55%, respectively, if today's radiative forcing is maintained until achieving equilibrium global warming. Under the scenario that best matches current national commitments (RCP4.5), we estimate that in the transient stage, two tipping points will be crossed. If radiative forcing is then held fixed after the year 2100, a further six tipping point thresholds are crossed. Achieving a trajectory similar to RCP2.6 requires reaching net-zero emissions rapidly, which would greatly reduce the likelihood of tipping events.

No comprehensive understanding of justice in climate scenarios exists. This gap limits the extent to which scenarios can inform global policy discussions that have just transitions as a key guiding principle. Here, we bridge the gap between a theoretical justice framework and a study-specific applications for integrated assessment modelling, which produce quantitative scenarios for policy and decision support.

Granular energy technologies with smaller unit sizes and costs deploy faster, create more jobs, and distribute benefits more widely than lumpy large-scale alternatives. These characteristics of granularity align with the aims of fiscal stimulus in response to COVID-19. We analyze the technological granularity of 93 green recovery funding programs in France, Germany, South Korea, and the UK that target £72.9 billion for low-carbon energy technologies and infrastructures across five emissions-intensive sectors. We find that South Korea’s “New Deal” program is the most technologically granular with strong weighting toward distributed renewables, smart technologies, electric vehicle charge points, and other relatively low unit cost technologies that are quick to deploy. The UK has the least granular portfolio, concentrating large amounts of public money on small numbers of mega-scale energy projects with high implementation risks. We demonstrate how technological granularity has multiple desirable characteristics of green recovery: jobs, speed, and distributed benefits.

Despite decades of increasing investment in conservation, we have not succeeded in “bending the curve” of biodiversity decline. Efforts to meet new targets and goals for the next three decades risk repeating this outcome due to three factors: neglect of increasing drivers of decline; unrealistic expectations and time frames of biodiversity recovery; and insufficient attention to justice within and between generations and across countries. Our Earth system justice approach identifies six sets of actions that when tackled simultaneously address these failings: (1) reduce and reverse direct and indirect drivers causing decline; (2) halt and reverse biodiversity loss; (3) restore and regenerate biodiversity to a safe state; (4) raise minimum wellbeing for all; (5) eliminate over-consumption and excesses associated with accumulation of capital; and (6) uphold and respect the rights and responsibilities of all communities, present and future. Current conservation campaigns primarily address actions 2 and 3, with urgent upscaling of actions 1, 4, 5, and 6 needed to help deliver the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1,2,3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are already exceeded. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.

Social tipping points are promising levers to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission targets. They describe how social, political, economic or technological systems can move rapidly into a new state if cascading positive feedback mechanisms are triggered. Analysing the potential of social tipping for rapid decarbonization requires considering the inherent complexity of social systems. Here, we identify that existing scientific literature is inclined to a narrative-based account of social tipping, lacks a broad empirical framework and a multi-systems view. We subsequently outline a dynamic systems approach that entails (i) a systems outlook involving interconnected feedback mechanisms alongside cross-system and cross-scale interactions, and including a socioeconomic and environmental injustice perspective (ii) directed data collection efforts to provide empirical evidence for and monitor social tipping dynamics, (iii) global, integrated, descriptive modelling to project future dynamics and provide ex-ante evidence for interventions. Research on social tipping must be accordingly solidified for climate policy relevance.

The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine have impacted the global economy, including the energy sector. The pandemic caused drastic fluctuations in energy demand, oil price shocks, disruptions in energy supply chains, and hampered energy investments, while the war left the world with energy price hikes and energy security challenges. The long-term impacts of these crises on low-carbon energy transitions and mitigation of climate change are still uncertain but are slowly emerging. This paper analyzes the impacts throughout the energy system, including upstream fuel supply, renewable energy investments, demand for energy services, and implications for energy equity, by reviewing recent studies and consulting experts in the field. We find that both crises initially appeared as opportunities for low-carbon energy transitions: the pandemic by showing the extent of lifestyle and behavioral change in a short period and the role of science-based policy advice, and the war by highlighting the need for greater energy diversification and reliance on local, renewable energy sources. However, the early evidence suggests that policymaking worldwide is focused on short-term, seemingly quicker solutions, such as supporting the incumbent energy industry in the post-pandemic era to save the economy and looking for new fossil fuel supply routes for enhancing energy security following the war. As such, the fossil fuel industry may emerge even stronger after these energy crises creating new lock-ins. This implies that the public sentiment against dependency on fossil fuels may end as a lost opportunity to translate into actions toward climate-friendly energy transitions, without ambitious plans for phasing out such fuels altogether. We propose policy recommendations to overcome these challenges toward achieving resilient and sustainable energy systems, mostly driven by energy services.

This chapter provides an overview of the multi-faceted landscape of methods used to study the steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals. After a discussion of the political use of science and the complex relations between science and politics, the chapter showcases a selection of different methods that are employed to trace the steering effects of the Sustainable Development Goals. Selecting the most suitable method for a particular research question requires understanding their main characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. The chapter highlights that all methods and tools need to be combined to comprehensively assess the political impact of the goals, the progress towards their achievement, and their overall transformative potential. As data gaps and unequal geographical coverage still hamper a broader understanding of the political impact of the globalgoals, we need to build bridges across language communities, disciplines and methodological camps, which still work very much in isolation.

How can human needs be satisfied and well-being improved while using fewer resources to provide energy services? This chapter draws on ideas from sustainability science, international development, energy economics, and engineering to evaluate energy services. Needs satisfied by energy services include nutrition, mobility, shelter, and thermal comfort. The provisioning systems that deliver these services require energy, material, and land resource inputs. An energy transition characterized by services-led transformation has three key requirements. First, service-provisioning systems must become dramatically more resource efficient to stay within planetary boundaries. Second, modern energy services must be universally accessible and affordable, making decent living standards available for all. Third, excessive consumption that compromises planetary boundaries while providing no gains for well-being must be curbed. Meeting these three requirements on resource efficiency, universal access, and sufficiency can help transform energy services to deliver on global sustainability goals.

Jason Hickel and colleagues reported large inequalities in global resource extraction, which has led to an ecological crisis. Hickel and colleagues show that high-income countries are responsible for 74% of global excess material use of equitable and sustainable boundaries from 1970 to 2017. Therefore, the authors suggested that high-income countries should undergo post-growth and degrowth transformations. Adding to Hickel and colleagues’ convincing assessment, we want to introduce a broader focus on distributive justice in human and planetary wellbeing, which goes beyond resource extraction. We provide a broad view of the multiple dimensions of inequality, capturing enablers (eg, material use) and the effects of resource use that act as barriers to human wellbeing (eg, air pollution). We follow the theory of human needs with the universal goal of avoiding serious harm across the globe and across generations, and enabling capabilities and opportunities needed for a decent life. We argue that such a comprehensive focus on human and planetary wellbeing allows responsibilities to be shared more fairly in any transition process.

Despite decades of increasing investment in conservation, we have not succeeded in “bending the curve” of biodiversity decline. Efforts to meet new targets and goals for the next three decades risk repeating this outcome due to three factors: neglect of increasing drivers of decline; unrealistic expectations and time frames of biodiversity recovery; and insufficient attention to justice within and between generations and across countries. Our Earth system justice approach identifies six sets of actions that when tackled simultaneously address these failings: (1) reduce and reverse direct and indirect drivers causing decline; (2) halt and reverse biodiversity loss; (3) restore and regenerate biodiversity to a safe state; (4) raise minimum wellbeing for all; (5) eliminate over-consumption and excesses associated with accumulation of capital; and (6) uphold and respect the rights and responsibilities of all communities, present and future. Current conservation campaigns primarily address actions 2 and 3, with urgent upscaling of actions 1, 4, 5, and 6 needed to help deliver the post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The Sustainable Development Goals aim to improve access to resources and services, reduce environmental degradation, eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. However, the magnitude of the environmental burden that would arise from meeting the needs of the poorest is under debate—especially when compared to much larger burdens from the rich. We show that the ‘Great Acceleration’ of human impacts was characterized by a ‘Great Inequality’ in using and damaging the environment. We then operationalize ‘just access’ to minimum energy, water, food and infrastructure. We show that achieving just access in 2018, with existing inequalities, technologies and behaviours, would have produced 2–26% additional impacts on the Earth’s natural systems of climate, water, land and nutrients—thus further crossing planetary boundaries. These hypothetical impacts, caused by about a third of humanity, equalled those caused by the wealthiest 1–4%. Technological and behavioural changes thus far, while important, did not deliver just access within a stable Earth system. Achieving these goals therefore calls for a radical redistribution of resources.

With the establishment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), countries worldwide agreed to a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all. This ambition, however, exposes a critical gap in science-based insights, namely on how to achieve the 17 SDGs simultaneously. Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could help explore the needed systems' transformations. This requires a clear definition of the "target space." The 169 targets and 232 indicators used for monitoring SDG implementation cannot be used for this; they are too many, too broad, unstructured, and sometimes not formulated quantitatively. Here, we propose a streamlined set of science-based indicators and associated target values that are quantifiable and actionable to make scenario analysis meaningful, relevant, and simple enough to be transparent and communicable. The 36 targets are based on the SDGs, existing multilateral agreements, literature, and expert assessment. They include 2050 as a longer-term reference point. This target space can guide researchers in developing new sustainable development pathways.

By adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries worldwide agreed to an agenda for achieving a prosperous, socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable future for all1. This ambition, however, also exposes a critical knowledge gap since science-based insights on how to achieve the 17 SDGs simultaneously are lacking. Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could enable exploration of the systems' transformations required to achieve the SDGs, but this requires a clear definition of the "target space". The 169 targets and 232 indicators defined by the international community for monitoring SDG implementation cannot be directly used for this purpose. Here, we define a streamlined set of well-defined, science-based indicators and associated target values that is quantifiable and actionable to make quantitative scenario analysis meaningful, relevant (i.e. reflecting societal goals), and yet simple enough to keep analysis transparent and communicable. The set of 36 targets is based on the UN 2030 Agenda, other existing multilateral agreements and insights from sustainability science and expert assessment, and it includes 2050 as an additional longer-term reference point. Thus, this target space provides a strategic focus to guide the scientific community in developing new global sustainable development pathways.

Keeping the Earth system in a stable and resilient state, to safeguard Earth's life support systems while ensuring that Earth's benefits, risks, and related responsibilities are equitably shared, constitutes the grand challenge for human development in the Anthropocene. Here, we describe a framework that the recently formed Earth Commission will use to define and quantify target ranges for a “safe and just corridor” that meets these goals. Although “safe” and “just” Earth system targets are interrelated, we see safe as primarily referring to a stable Earth system and just targets as being associated with meeting human needs and reducing exposure to risks. To align safe and just dimensions, we propose to address the equity dimensions of each safe target for Earth system regulating systems and processes. The more stringent of the safe or just target ranges then defines the corridor. Identifying levers of social transformation aimed at meeting the safe and just targets and challenges associated with translating the corridor to actors at multiple scales present scope for future work.

The term “science-based targets” has gained recent popularity. It is used to refer both to overall science-based targets (established through intergovernmental treaties), and to their disaggregation into specific science-based targets (determining contributions of individual actors). Biophysical achievability, measurability, and underpinning rationale are requirements for considering a target to be “science-based”.

The transport sector is particularly difficult to decarbonize. Use of electric vehicles (EV)—a potentially transformative and sustainable transport technology—can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, domestic fossil fuel demand, energy import dependency, and air pollution. Policies play an important role in the diffusion of new technologies, such as EVs, principally in their formative stage as they compete with an incumbent technology. However, great discrepancies exist across countries regarding EV support and uptake. EV diffusion is conceptualized as an outcome of policy diffusion based on national characteristics and international mechanisms. This study aims to explain the variation in EV policy diffusion across countries, by conducting an event history analysis on EV diffusion (EVs > 1% market share) between 2010 and 2017, using a sample of 60 countries. It identifies characteristics and mechanisms relevant to the novel technology's "formative phase”, focusing on the formation of state goals, international diffusion, and local technology adoption and deployment. The empirical contribution lies in identifying and validating socioeconomic and political factors and the international mechanisms influencing a country's position on the diffusion curve. This can help improve scenarios via better reflecting EV diffusion.

This report proposes a new transformative narrative to help guide the next phase of Smart Specialisation activities. The narrative helps align Smart Specialisation with the European Green Deal and the UN 2030 Agenda by offering directionality and combining different levels of policy to achieve the needed sustainability transformations. The report highlights the role of policy coherence and coordination for the transformation. It presents approaches to increase policy coherence to harness synergies and alleviate trade-offs across different objectives with a focus on environmental issues. Throughout this report a number of selected cases is used to illustrate the conceptual discussion developed in a more theoretical part of the report. These cases presented in the report cover countries and regions from within and outside the European Union. EU countries and outside the EU and present lessons learnt on the different topics linked to Smart Specialisation, sustainability and environmental commons. The report concludes by a discussion on how to orient existing S3 approaches towards sustainability.

Keeping the Earth system in a stable and resilient state, in order to safeguard Earth's life support systems while ensuring that Earth's benefits, risks and related responsibilities are equitably shared, constitutes the grand challenge for human development in the Anthropocene. Here, we describe a framework that the recently formed Earth Commission will use to define and quantify target ranges for a ‘safe and just corridor’ that meets these goals. Although ‘safe’ and ‘just’ Earth system targets are interrelated, we see safe as primarily referring to a stable Earth system and just targets as being associated with meeting human needs and reducing exposure to risks. To align safe and just dimensions, we propose to address the equity dimensions of each safe target for Earth system regulating systems and processes. The more stringent of the safe or just target ranges then defines the corridor. Identifying levers of social transformation aimed at meeting the safe and just targets and challenges associated with translating the corridor to actors at multiple scales present scope for future work.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a halt to life as we knew it in our cities. It has also put a magnifying glass on existing inequalities and poverty. While everyone has been facing the pandemic's risks, the lived challenges of the lockdowns have been felt most acutely by the poor, the vulnerable, those in the informal sector, and without savings and safety nets. Here, we identify three ways that the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures have exacerbated urban inequalities and how subsequent recovery measures and policy responses have tried to redress these. First, lockdowns amplified urban energy poverty, while recovery measures and policies offer an opportunity to address entrenched inequalities in shelter and energy access. Second, preexisting digital divides even within well-connected cities have translated into inequalities in preparedness for living through the lockdown, but digitalization strategies can enhance equity in access to e-services, online work and education for all in the future. Third, slum dwellers in the world's cities have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and lockdown measures, but the spotlight on them provides further impetus for slum upgradation efforts that through improved access to infrastructure can improve living conditions and provide more secure livelihoods.

The global lockdown due to COVID-19 has reduced industrial activities, construction, tourism, material demand, and mobility. This has impacted many sectors of the global economy including the energy sector which has witnessed movements both towards and away from sustainability. Key trends observed include a reduced demand for both energy and energy services, zero to negative oil prices, disruptions in the supply chain of energy technologies and materials – specially for renewable energy, and a decline in investments. This has led to welcome reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, revealed opportunities for new and digitalized business models and responsible lifestyle choices, but all these will be short lived if we go back to business as usual. Such behavioral and societal changes have revealed the potential for structural change and transitions in demand for energy services towards sustainability. An interesting revelation is that the positive fallouts for sustainable development are all related to what are commonly perceived to be difficult-to-overcome barriers such as lifestyle choices, behavior, and business models. Whereas the negative fallouts for sustainable development are the relatively easier to address issues of reinstating supply chains and kick-starting/accelerating investments in sustainable energy. As the world looks to recover from the economic and jobs related consequences of the pandemic, all stakeholders have a responsibility to ensure that we create a system of incentives to reward sustainable behavior while penalizing those actions that would take us back to the path of unsustainability. For the energy sector, this would translate not only to the choices that influence the supply of energy, including evaluating the balance of centralized and decentralized energy options, but also the choices that would impact the demand for energy itself! Re-examining these business models from the point of view of contributions to economic gro

Geospatial data and the developments that characterise Geospatial 2.0 provide a thread that will link disparate systems into a comprehensive system-of-systems fit for the future.

Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are introduced, and integrated population and human capital scenarios for joint analysis of human development, coping with environmental changes, and securing human lifesupport systems are considered. Incorporating environmental feedbacks on economic growth is discussed. These scenarios are linked with the SDGs ashighlighted by IIASA’s ‘The World in 2050’ framework (a broad transformational narrative; targets and indicators for 2030, 2050 and beyond;and sustainable development pathways). Developments to obtain more integrated sustainability pathways could include integrating feedbacks from environmental damages into demographic and education projections; and further integrating demographic, education, and income projections. A gender aspect could be considered. Modelling assessments of sustainability pathways can be enhanced. Quantitative scenarios for SDGs related to human development can be improved and better integrated with indicators for other SDGs. Societal changes, the evolution of human needs, and possible changes in governance could be better integrated into modelling.

Of the 45 energy technologies deemed critical by the International Energy Agency for meeting global climate targets, 38 need to improve substan- tially in cost and performance while accelerating deployment over the next decades.Low-carbon technological solutions vary in scale from solar panels, e-bikes, and smart thermostats to carbon capture and storage, light rail transit, and whole-building retrofits. We make three contributions to long-standing debates on the appropriate scale of technological responses in the energy system. First, we focus on the specific needs of accelerated low-carbon transformation: rapid technology deployment, escaping lock-in, and social legitimacy. Second, we synthesize evidence on energy end-use technologies in homes, transport, and industry, as well as electricity generation and energy supply. Third, we go beyond technical and economic considerations to include innovation, investment, deployment, social, and equity criteria for assessing the relative advantage of alternative technologies as a function of their scale. We suggest numerous potential advantages of more-granular energy technologies for accelerating progress toward climate targets, as well as the conditions on which such progress depends.