Accounting for interactions between Sustainable Development Goals is essential for water pollution control in China

TLDR

The United Nations' 17 SDGs are a global mission, yet their interrelationships remain poorly understood. The study evaluates how SDG interactions affect nutrient‑based water pollution control in China. Six scenarios were modeled with a large‑scale water quality model to exploit synergies and avoid tradeoffs in SDG interactions. The analysis identified 319 SDG interactions—286 synergies and 33 tradeoffs—showing that accounting for SDG interactions is essential, and that integrated nutrient management, food consumption efficiency, and climate mitigation can simultaneously meet SDGs 6, 14, and others, illustrating a model for policy design.

Abstract

Meeting the United Nations' (UN's) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has become a worldwide mission. How these SDGs interrelate, however, is not well known. We assess the interactions between SDGs for the case of water pollution by nutrients in China. The results show 319 interactions between SDGs for clean water (SDGs 6 and 14) and other SDGs, of which 286 are positive (synergies) and 33 are negative (tradeoffs) interactions. We analyze six scenarios in China accounting for the cobenefits of water pollution control using a large-scale water quality model. We consider scenarios that benefit from synergies and avoid tradeoffs. Our results show that effective pollution control requires accounting for the interactions between SDGs. For instance, combining improved nutrient management, efficient food consumption, and climate mitigation is effective for simultaneously meeting SDGs 6 and 14 as well as other SDGs for food, cities and climate. Our study serves as an example of assessing SDG interactions in environmental policies in China as well as in other regions of the world.