Synergies and trade-offs for the SDGs in a deltaic socio-ecological system: Development of an Integrated Assessment Model

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promote sustainable development and aim to address multiple challenges including those related to poverty, hunger, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation. Interlinkages between SDGS means there is potential for interactions, synergies and trade-offs between individual goals across multiple temporal and spatial scales. We aim to develop an Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) of a complex deltaic socio-ecological system where opportunities and trade-offs between the SDGs can be analysed. This is designed to inform local/regional policy. We focus on the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) within the Indian Ganga Delta. This is home to 5.6 million often poor people with a strong dependence on rural livelihoods and also includes the Indian portion of the world’s largest mangrove forest – the Sundarbans. The area is subject to multiple drivers of environmental change operating at multiple scales (e.g. global climate change and sea-level rise, deltaic subsidence, extensive land use conversion and widespread migration). Here we discuss the challenges of linking models of human and natural systems to each other in the context of local policy decisions and SDG indicators. Challenges include linking processes derived at multiple spatial and temporal scales and data limitations. We present a framework for an IAM, based on the Delta Dynamic Emulator Model (ΔDIEM), to investigate the affects of current and future trends in environmental change and policy decisions within the SBR across a broad range of sub-thematic SDG indicators. This work brings together a wealth of experience in understanding and modelling changes in complex human and natural systems within deltas from previous projects (ESPA Deltas and DECCMA), along with local government and stakeholder expert knowledge within the Indian Ganga Delta.