WP 6 - Sustainable Development Pathways

The main goal of WP6 is to develop and disseminate new Sustainable Development Pathways (SDP) that allow to achieve long-term climate and other sustainability goals simultaneously. These pathways will build upon the work and results of the work packages 1 to 5 and on the results of the interaction with the stakeholders throughout the project.

As a first step we develop different scenarios for future societal development pathways. These scenarios will be co-designed in close interaction with stakeholders and social scientists from the other work packages. We then analyse the performance of these scenarios with a wide set of sustainability criteria. Thus, trade-offs and synergies associated with the different pathways will be highlighted. To ensure that scenarios describe consistent narratives, a core task will be the prioritization of interlinkages of different Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that can and should be represented in the scenarios. This step will be based on results of WP2-5.

The completed scenarios will then be implemented in three internationally leading Integrated Assessment Models (IMAGE, MESSAGE-GLOBIOM, and REMIND-MAgPIE). The implementation choices and the scenario assumptions will be documented in a transparent way. This way we ensure that other modelling teams can explore and develop similar scenarios within these Integrated Assessment Models.

In close interaction with stakeholders involved in the SHAPE project, we will target and effectively disseminate the key insights and messages of the scenario analysis with a broad group of relevant policy-makers and practitioners. Furthermore, involvement of the consortium in IPCC processes and in the global research initiative TWI2050 ensures that the results will also be taken into account in future policy-relevant assessments.